Forum OpenACS Development: ad_form and [] in options

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1: ad_form and [] in options
Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 07/26/06 05:13 PM
ad_form runs a "subst [lindex $extra_arg 1]" on options passed in. This breaks if the title of an option is something like "MyFile[1].doc". We ran into this problem a couple of times and I am probably going to write a general filter to rename file_names accordingly (so no use of [] {} + in the file name), but the better solution would probably be to teach ad_form not to break with "command not found "1"". Any idea if I could do something about it savely or is it in purpose that the option label is evaluated within ad_form?
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2: Re: ad_form and [] in options (response to 1)
Posted by Dave Bauer on 07/26/06 05:22 PM
I believe it is supposed to be evaluated so [_ message.key] works (among other things)

Maybe we need more clear documentation

You can use a regsub or string replace to escape the characters, although that seems error prone as well.

Maybe Don has an idea.

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3: Re: ad_form and [] in options (response to 1)
Posted by Rocael Hernández Rizzardini on 07/26/06 05:29 PM
Right, we have detected the same problem. Probably one good solution is to have specific notation for interpret things (for instance [__ means actually execute the proc inside), and everything else should not be executed.
regsub will make the things harder to maintain since there are many cases.

[_ should be allowed as well for i18n.

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4: Re: Re: ad_form and [] in options (response to 3)
Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 07/27/06 10:21 AM
So, should we form a TIP around this, stating that anything starting with "[__" will be executed, as will "[_" but nothing else? And if yes, would removing the "subst" be enough?
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5: Re: Re: ad_form and [] in options (response to 3)
Posted by Gustaf Neumann on 07/27/06 10:34 AM
another option is to provide options to [_ ...], such as [_ -subst ....] or even provide the options of subst as options to _ (whoa, a sentence with 4 options).
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6: Re: ad_form and [] in options (response to 1)
Posted by Dave Bauer on 07/27/06 03:18 PM
Wait a minute!

the _ proc is not behaving unexpectedly, but ad_form, so we need to pass subst options to the various ad_form elements
ie:

{label -noprocs $some_var}

right?

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8: Re: Re: ad_form and [] in options (response to 6)
Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 07/27/06 04:26 PM
Your idea would work as well, but would require to rewrite a whole bunch of applications (adding the noprocs switch), though this would not require a TIP. Either way is fine with me, I will have to do this though over the weekend.
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7: Re: Re: ad_form and [] in options (response to 6)
Posted by Rocael Hernández Rizzardini on 07/27/06 04:29 PM
_ is the i18n proc, and that one is working fine, and should be allowed to execute always.
adding an explicit option will be good, though instead of -noprocs, better -allowprocs or something like that, because in most of the cases no-procs is what you want, isn't it?
I don't think the - will be needed, just:
{label allowprocs $var}
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9: Re: ad_form and [] in options (response to 1)
Posted by Dave Bauer on 07/27/06 04:40 PM
Malte,

Can we see the exact call to ad_form that is causing the problem? I am not sure if you pass a reglar variable that it will call the subst on the value of the variable, or the name of the variable. So please provide a reproducible example we can discuss.

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10: Re: Re: ad_form and [] in options (response to 9)
Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 07/27/06 05:18 PM
Sure. Here you go: 
if {$parent_id == $root_folder_id} {
                lappend files [list "$title ($content_size bytes)" $object_id]
            } else {
                lappend files [list "$title ($content_size bytes) ($foldername)" $object_id]
            }

ad_form -extend -name freelancer -form [list [list file_ids.${folder}:text(checkbox),multiple,optional [list label "[_ mypack.Folder] $folder_name"] [list options $files]]]
}
And the issue is that $title can have the values:
  • myfile[1].doc or
  • myfile{1}.doc or
  • my$file.doc
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13: Re: Re: Re: ad_form and [] in options (response to 10)
Posted by Dave Bauer on 07/28/06 01:47 PM
Malte

This would solve your problem:

ad_form -extend -name freelancer -form { {file_ids.${folder}:text(checkbox),multiple,optional [list label "[_ mypack.Folder] $folder_name"] [list options $files]}}

and be alot simpler than rewriting ad_form.

Using curly braces delays the evaluation you are actually passing the value of the options variable to ad_form instead of the name.

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11: Re: ad_form and [] in options (response to 1)
Posted by Torben Brosten on 07/28/06 04:42 AM
Is util::subst_safe indicated here?
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12: Re: Re: ad_form and [] in options (response to 11)
Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 07/28/06 09:21 AM
The question is what would subst_safe do? I could imagine:

run a subst in a catch. if Error, just return the value passed in. That would probably be the easiest and non TIP requiring fix, but I am not sure if it is the best one.