From: David Alan Black <dblack@...>
Date: 2002-05-10T00:17:36+09:00
Subject: Re: cgi params api

Hello --

On Thu, 9 May 2002, Patrick May wrote:

> One thing that I don't like is the way cgi forces you to treat every
> param as if there were multiples, when most of the time you're dealing
> with single params.
>
> I know you can do things like
>
> multiple, = cgi["multiple"]
>
> or
>
> multiple = cgi["multiple"][0]
>
> but these seem crufty.  Here's an idea I had:
>
>
> # query string =>  "multiple=something&key=value&multiple=somethingelse"
> cgi["multiple"]                  # <= "something"
> cgi["multiple"].multiple         # <= ["something", "somethingelse"]
>
> cgi["key"]                       # <= "value"
> cgi["key"].multiple              # <= ["value"]
>
>
> This api would handle the most common case in a very intuitive way for
> the programmer.  It also allows the programmer to explicitly handle
> multiple params.

I'm wondering whether there's a nicer name than "multiple" for this --
maybe "all"?  "multiple" sounds kind of low-level to me, and also
since what you have in mind can return an array of one element, it
probably isn't the most accurate term.

(I'm not totally sure I wouldn't want to have it be the other way
around -- well, I guess that means the way it is now, but maybe with a
nice method, like #first, instead of having to do [0].  But since
you're doing all the work, I'll shut up :-)


David

-- 
David Alan Black
home: dblack@candle.superlink.net
work: blackdav@shu.edu
Web:  http://pirate.shu.edu/~blackdav