Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:10265
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Message-ID: <20040603180803.77866.qmail@pb1.pair.com>
To: internals@lists.php.net
References: <40BE1285.9010701@iamjochem.com> <20040602204304.35253.qmail@pb1.pair.com> <40BF5A18.9020101@iamjochem.com>
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2004 11:08:03 -0700
Lines: 47
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: http_build_query unexpected/bad behaviour
From: pollita@php.net ("Sara Golemon")

> >>the issue is that the array $y below results in an empty string:
> >>
> >>$x = array('e' => array('kf' => ''));
> >>$y = array('e' => array('kf' => array()));
> >>
> >>echo '\''. http_build_query($x). "'\n";
> >>echo '\''. http_build_query($y) . "'\n";
> >>
> my original assumption was that both cases would produce the same
> result. I don't see the rationale (although internally it may be
> obvious) that the second array 'resolves' (is that the correct use of
> the word?) into an empty string. -
>
Let's look at them then:

$x becomes `e[kf]=`  which is to say "make e an array containing an empty
string at offset kf"

In the case of $y, the closest thing you could come to would be `e[kf][]=`
which says "make e an array containing another array at offset kf which
contains an empty string."  This is not precisely the same as what's
represented in the original $y variable.  If we were to process that query
string into variables we'd get back  array('e'=>array('kf'=>array('')))....
*close* but no cigar.

The problem is that array creation from a query string relies on implicit
array creation and there is no way to implicitly create an empty array.

> an empty string is a valid value for a param coming from the POST/GET
> request, php's loose nature lead me to assume the an empty array in such
> a context would result in at least the some output - I went with the
> feeling that an empty array is not emptier than an empty string.
>
It is in the sense that query strings don't honestly have a concept of
arrays.  So you can feed a query string an empty string and it says "Oh! An
empty string! How nice!"  but an empty array is so far outside of its
understand it'll just stare at you and wonder what's going through your
mind.

It's *possible* to change the behavior of http_build_query() to treat an
empty array as an array containing an empty string as its only element.  But
that is the sort of thing to lead to severely unexpected behavior and is
probably not the way to go.

-Sara