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Date: Fri, 04 Jun 2004 16:15:10 +0200
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To: Sara Golemon <pollita@php.net>, 
 php internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: http_build_query unexpected/bad behaviour
From: jochem@iamjochem.com (Jochem Maas)

Sara, just a quick thankyou for taking the time to explain!
and to say that I will be adding some sanity checks around my use of 
http_build_query() to avoid passing it arrays whose 'endpoints' are 
empty arrays as there is obviously nothing broken here

kind regards,
Jochem Maas

Sara Golemon wrote:

>>>>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
>