[Zope-Perl] getting a list of form field names

[Gisle Aas]

Maarten Slaets <mslaets@goldridge.net> writes:

> Using the REQUEST object in a PerlMethod I'm trying to get a list of the
> form field names, because I don't know them. I have used the keys()
> function but it seems to return a list in string format.
> 
> ------------------------------------
> arguments: REQUEST
> body:
> 
> my $req = shift;
> my $ret;
> my $keys;
> 
> $keys = $req->keys();

What you get here is a reference to a python list object.  You can use
methods like $keys->Length and $keys->GetItem($i) to extract stuff
from it.

> $keys =~ s/^\[(.*?)\]$/$1/;

But, when you use it as a string it will stringify into "[elem1,
elem2,...]".  This also happen when you print it.

> foreach (split(/,/, $keys)) {
>   s/^\s?'(.*?)'\s?$/$1/;
>   $ret .= "$_\n";
> }

A better way would be to write:

  $keys = $req->keys;
  for $i (0 .. $keys->Length - 1) {
      $ret .= "$_\n";
  }

but with my current version (did not get into 'a2') I made methods
which return python sequences (that includes lists) that are called in
array context unwrap the list.  That allow you to write the code as:

  for ($req->keys) {
      $ret .= "$_\n";
  }

> ['field1', 'field2', ...]
> so I did some splitting
> 
> Is there a way to do something like:
> @formfields = $req->keys()

This works in my version.

> or even better:
> %formdata = $req->keys()

$req->items gives you a list of (key, value) tuples.  You should be
able to assign it to a hash with code like:

  %formdata = map { $_->GetItem(0) => $_->GetItem(1) } $req->keys()

but it is kind of ugly.  Perhaps we need to recognize certain objects
and rebless into a more specific perl class (like "Zope::Request")
that modify methods to be more perl friendly.

Regards,
Gisle