From: matz@... (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Date: 2001-09-19T17:39:39+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:21383] Re: Suggestions for new CGI lib

Hi,

In message "[ruby-talk:21381] Re: Suggestions for new CGI lib"
    on 01/09/19, Anders Johannsen <anders@johannsen.com> writes:

|> What should these methods return?  cgi.rb returns an array of values,
|> but it's not convenient for many cases.
|
|A String (since each of cgi.request.(post|get|cookie|env|var)
|effectively is a Hash)

Then what if there are multiple values for a form name, for example:

  GET /script.cgi?user_var=foo&user_var=bar HTTP/1.1
  Host: www.example.com
  Connection: close

What should be returned for cgi.request["user_var"]?  Possible
solution can be any of:

  * "foo\0bar"      (Perl's cgi-lib.pl and cgi-lib.rb)
  * ["foo", "bar"]  (cgi.rb)
  * #<FieldStorage> (Python's cgi.py)
  * or something else

FYI, single value results are following respectively:

  * "foo"           (Perl's cgi-lib.pl and cgi-lib.rb)
  * ["foo"]         (cgi.rb)
  * #<FieldStorage> (Python's cgi.py)

Probably most natural solution is "foo" for single value, and
["foo", "bar"] for multiple values, although it's little bit
inconsistent.

|> |CGI::Namespace # cgi.namespace
|>  
|> |  # Introduce new namespace with the indicated variables exported
|> |(non-existant variables is   nil)
|> |  cgi.namespace.var do
|> |    unless non_existant_var.nil?
|> |      # Do stuff
|> |    end
|> |  end   
|> 
|> I'm not sure what this method does.
|
|In the above example, cgi.request.var['user_var'] is availiable as
|user_var inside the block. Non existant variables/methods return nil
|instead of raising a NameError exception. Perhaps it is a silly
|thought.

Hmm, I don't think it's not possible for Ruby to add local variable
without declaration (unless you use magic using internal).

|> What do you think about HTML generation?  Some want it separated from
|> CGI.  The current CGI::Session uses this integration.
|
|I would like to see them seperated. CGI is not necessarily used for
|HTML.

I agree conceptually.  My only concern is how to implement CGI session.

							matz.