Forum OpenACS Development: Add -arr_p switch to db_list_of_lists

I propose adding an "-arr_p" switch to the db_list_of_lists proc. It would default to "-arr_p 0", which is the current behavior. With "-arr_p 1", it instead returns a list of lists, where each interior list is in "array get" form, with the column name as each key.

The implementation change (see below) is trivial, just a two lines or so, but this seems quite useful to me. Comments?

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Posted by Andrew Piskorski on
Here's the whole function including the small change, based on that shipped with OpenaCS 5.1.4:

ad_proc -public db_list_of_lists {{
   -dbn ""
   -arr_p 0
} statement_name sql args } {

    Usage: <b>db_list_of_lists</b> <i>statement-name sql</i> [ <tt>-bind</tt> <i>bind_set_id</i> | <tt>-bind</tt> <i>bind_value_list</i> ]

    @return a Tcl list, each element of which is a list of all column
    values in a row of the result of the SQL query<tt>sql</tt>. If
    <tt>sql</tt> doesn't return any rows, returns an empty list.
    Analogous to <tt>database_to_tcl_list_list</tt>.

    @param dbn The database name to use.  If empty_string, uses the default database.

    @param arr_p If true, returns each interior list (on the of lists)
    in the Tcl "array get" key/value form.  If false, returns a simple
    Tcl list without the keys.
} {
    ad_arg_parser { bind } $args

    # Query Dispatcher (OpenACS - SDW)
    set full_statement_name [db_qd_get_fullname $statement_name]

    # Can't use db_foreach here, since we need to use the ns_set directly.
    db_with_handle -dbn $dbn db {
        set selection [db_exec select $db $full_statement_name $sql]
        set result [list]
        while { [db_getrow $db $selection] } {
            set this_result [list]
            for { set i 0 } { $i < [ns_set size $selection] } { incr i } {
                if { $arr_p } {
                    lappend this_result [ns_set key $selection $i] [ns_set value $selection $i]
                } else {
                    lappend this_result [ns_set value $selection $i]
                }
            }
            lappend result $this_result
        }
    }
    return $result
}
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Posted by Don Baccus on
Why not add a db_list_of_arrays API command? This is more in the spirit of the db_* API. The fact that arrays happen to be shuffled around in a particular list format is just a Tcl implementation artifact ...