The general rule is that a given entity reference name cannot
contain the separator for separating from its parent entity
reference (it has to be escaped).
These are pretty simple rules IMO (and this is one reason why you
cannot "skip" an entity reference separator as in "wiki:page").
Thanks
-Vincent
On Dec 23, 2009, at 3:42 PM, Vincent Massol wrote:
Hi,
Since I'm writing the new Model part for Entity References
(document and attachment for now but we can imagine objects and
object properties later on). I'd like to propose 2 things:
* A syntax for escaping special characters in references
* Some changes to the supported reference syntax
Escapes
=======
I'd like to propose using the backslash (i.e. \ ) character.
For example: "a page name with \: some \. special \@ characters"
Rationale:
* it's a well known char for escapes, all devs know about it
* using "~" would be confusing with the wiki syntax
Known issue:
* when in the velocity macro you need to be careful to use a
double escape since \ is the velocity char for escaping. Ex:
{{velocity}}
[[label>>special\\@page-name]]
{{/velocity}}
Breakages
=========
Since we'll know have a generic factory/serializer for all entity
types we need to make the syntax more consistent. This means that
the following syntax will not work anymore:
* ex: "wiki:page". This would be interpreted as a document with a
page of "page" and a space of "wiki:"
* When using the "default" factory, only default values would be
used (right now it's a mix between current doc values and default
values). Suggested defaults: "xwiki" for Wiki, "XWiki" for space,
"WebHome" for page and "" for attachment name. Note that one idea
is to make these defaults configurable in the xwiki config file
* It's hard to know for sure but we certainly have various other
inconsistencies that exist now when using special reserved chars
in references
We have 2 options here:
* Make XE 2.2 not backward compatible for some references.
Advertise it in the release notes and explain to users how they
should change their names if they use "exotic" names
* Create an automatic converter, for example as a database
migrator that would read all documents in the wiki, call
getLinks() on each document, send the links to the old parser
(would need to extract it somewhere and ensure it behaves as now)
and send the link to the new parser and compare. If there's a
difference, escape the char and save. This would also need to be
done for document parent references, the backlink table and all
object properties that allow wiki syntax or velocity. Note that it
wouldn't fix any generated name (using velocity for ex).
The automatic converter option is really hard to do so I'm leaning
more towards the first solution. That would need to be properly
handled since it could potentially cause quite a few broken links.
WDYT?
Thanks
-Vincent