12 Nov
2013
12 Nov
'13
5:44 a.m.
On 11/11/2013 05:48 PM, Marius Dumitru Florea wrote:
Hi devs,
I just reported http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XCOMMONS-494 . It seems
the following generates a NPE:
$escapetool.url({
'foo': $null,
'bar': ['one', $null, 'three'],
$null: 'value'
})
I see 3 possible results:
(1) Skip null parameter key and value
bar=one&bar=three
(2) Use 'null' for both the key and the value
foo=null&bar=one&bar=null&bar=three&null=value
(3) Use empty string for null value
foo=&bar=one&bar=&bar=three&null=value
I'm going to implement (1) if no one is against it.
It is legal to have parameters without values, like ?foo&bar=baz, and
this signifies that a parameter is present, although it's exact value is
irrelevant, it's just a marker for something. So I'd say that a null
value should output just the key.
If that null is part of a longer list of values, is it important to
represent each null? Possibly, if the presence of nulls in the array of
values is meaningful. But back on the server, reading such a parameter
outputs an empty string instead of null, so it's not idempotent; we'd be
replacing nulls with empty strings. Anyway, an empty string is better
than a "null" string which could actually mean something.
A null key, on the other hand, looks like an error. Without the proper
key, the value is not that valuable (pun intended). What's it supposed
to represent? So a null key should be skipped (right now it's included
in the output, and it uses "null" as the key name).
So, in conclusion, I vote for:
(4) foo&bar=one&bar&bar=three
--
Sergiu Dumitriu
http://purl.org/net/sergiu