Fix handling arrays in session data #709
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As reported in #693 the session data can get overwritten. This happened if there is an array in the session data as the logic takes this to be checkboxes data and stores it, overwriting the existing data.
Check for objects first. This makes the relationship of objects and arrays clearer in case person reading the code doesn’t know that arrays are always objects. Plus some other tidy up.
Demo for testing that data in various shapes doesn't get overwritten. Next step: have tests to handle this.
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This is now working as expected, thanks for your work on this, it's a big help for me and our team's prototype 👍 |
Co-authored-by: Nick Colley <nick.colley@digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk>
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I’ve just pushed up some simple tests that @NickColley and I worked on for this quite a long time ago now. We should add some more to account for all the cases currently described in 399dd8e (and then remove the said commit). |
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| // Example as used in current docs |
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I think we need to leave this file blank for users to fill in if they need to? Can this test data be stored somewhere else?
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It's just test code for whoever picks this up next. "Delete this commit. Demo for testing"
| describe('The data storage', () => { | ||
| // check session-data defaults file exists | ||
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| it.skip('file should exist', (done) => { |
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I'm not too familiar with Jest, but I think you're trying to access the session defaults file from an http request, which won't work. The file exists for the server to set up the default session data, not for access client-side.
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| const inputData = { | ||
| vehicle: { |
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inputData comes from an http request, in which case I think it can only be key/value pairs, not objects. I think to test we need to use dot or square bracket notation in strings, like 'vehicle.registration=OUTATIME'
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sorry I'm wrong, the strings get converted to objects by Express BodyParser here:
https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-prototype-kit/blob/master/server.js#L134-L138
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@daviddotto yes I can replicate that. In this PR there is a default data file that sets up arrays in JSON. In that case the [0] notation appears to work, but in the case where there is no default data, it interprets it as a string property of an object, as you say. |
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I don't think this PR currently works to update arrays, I've written up my findings here: |
Draft fix for #693.
If user stores data in array format the rest of the data in the surrounding item gets overwritten. This fork happens when we check for checkboxes data. Storing data as objects as we show in our docs works fine.
This PR:
We should really have automated tests in place to check if the session data is being stored correctly but as the kit currently has only very simple tests we need to think about how we're going to do the test coverage.
For now, I've added in a really simple manual way of testing whether the storage is working by setting lots of different shapes of data in
session-data-defaults.js, amending them in a form and echoing them on the following page to check that they are retained when the values are changed. See test page.To do: