WILL
----- Original Message ----- From: "specialist33" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Velocity Developers List" <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2005 12:32 PM
Subject: Just a thought...foreach else ?
Looking through our templteas written over the last few months, we have a LOT of cases of guarding on an empty foreach - empty means either something went wrong OR we need an explicit "no results returned" message.
One of the problmes with the previous engine we used was that you couldn't easily detect empty results sets, so we had lots of blanks where users didn't realise something was SUPPOSED to be there.
So now we have:
#set( $result = some method to get the data )
#if( $result && $result.size() > 0 )
#foreach( $item in $result ) ... #end
#else
No results! Was expecting some here. The "some method" hasn't worked, please tell an admin. Whatever. Your message goes here :)
#end
Which, I realised, would work much more nicely as:
#foreach( $r in $result ) ... #else No results found. Error message. Etc. #end
Now, not only does this make a lot of sense and cut out a lot of typing but it has another handy feature: it removes the explicit "size()". Unfortunately, Sun are poor at their own standards, and on some data you have "length()" on others "length" on others "size()" - but NONE of these are valid javabeans (you do sometimes see "getSize()" too but I can't think of an example in a Sun API right now...).
So, $result.size doesn't work and you must have the () - which looks very strange if you're using the beanshell shortcuts all over the rest of hte template.
We had a LOT of bugs where people didn't realise this, or saw the () and thought it was a mistake, seeing as nothing else had it. Even I made the mistake a couple of times (weeks apart) before I memorized it.
So...if we encoded the algorithm for picking legnths/sizes and checking if > 0 (where null ref is treated as 0, which is mathematically accurate :)) then we remove this convoluted and irritating and confusing (but short!) algorihtm from the heads of all the VTL users and put it into the engine.
PS sorry if this has already been proposed, but I had a quick search and didn't notice it anywhere
Thoughts? Should be quick n easy to implement I suspect if you're already familiar with the VTL code?
PPS don't ask me to fill a BZ bug. When you remove the account-creation BS so I don't have to faff about creating an account, waiting for an email, etc, I'll use BZ. Until then - no way. Honestly I would be *very* happy to file RFE's directly if there were no hassle...
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