From: Dave Garcia <davebcn@...>
Date: 2009-06-04T20:26:28+09:00
Subject: Nested HTTP params on ruby HTTP requests

Hi,

I'm using ruby HTTP classes to send POST requests to a server. The
problem is that I'm posting some many-levels hierarchical structures on
my form . When POST parameters are simple key/value there's no
serialization problem with form_data method on PostRequest.

{ :a => :b} => "a=b"

When the values are arrays it works fine too

{ :a => [:b,:c,:d]} => "a[]=b&a[]=c&a[]=d"

But when values are hashes serialization doesn't work as expected.

For example
{ :a => [{:b => :c}, {:d => :e}]} => "a[][b]=c&a[][d]=e"

I don't know if there's any other way to do it but browsing the code it
seems that only one nesting level is supported (maybe is an issue on my
ruby version 1.8.6).

I developed a tiny serialization method. Is a quick and dirty code (the
first release I've made) but it works for me.

module FormSerializer
  require "erb"
  include ERB::Util

  def serialize_form_data(data, path = "",serialized_params = [])
    if data.kind_of? Hash
      data.each_pair{|k,v| token = (path == "" ? url_encode(k) :
"[#{url_encode(k)}]"); serialize_form_data(v, "#{path}#{token}",
serialized_params)}
    elsif data.kind_of? Array
       data.each{|v| serialize_form_data(v, "#{path}[]",
serialized_params) }
    else
      #end of recursion
      serialized_params << "#{path}=#{url_encode(data)}"
    end

    return serialized_params.join("&") if (path == "")
  end


  #{ :a => :b} = "a=b"
  #{ :a => [:b,:c,:d]} = "a[]=b&a[]=c&a[]=d"
  #{ :a => :b, :b => :c} = "a=b&b=c"
  #{ :a => {:b => :c}} = "a[b] = c"
  #{ :a => [{:b => :c}, {:d => :e}]} = "a[][b] = c & a[][d] = e"


end

After this I only needed to modify

      def form_data(params, sep = '&')
          self.body = serialize_form_data(params)
          self.content_type = 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'
      end

I just finished the code some hours ago, basic testing has been
performed.
Hope this will be useful for anyone! :)

Best regards

Dave Garcia
-- 
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