Empty values of a POST array disappear after being submitted

[ibaaj]

Following my conversation with @blipsofadoug on Twitter

He says that It is an issue when you are using "extended" urlencoded body parsing

Empty values of a POST array disappear after being submitted.

HTML :

<form action="" method="post">
        <input type="text" name="data[]" value="snow" />
        <input type="text" name="data[]" value="" />
        <input type="text" name="data[]" value="hey oh" />
        <input type="submit" value="send me the sausage" />
</form>

in php : print_r($_POST['data'])

Array ( [0] => snow [1] => [2] => hey oh )

in nodejs console.log(req.body.data)

[ 'snow', 'hey oh' ]

[dougwilson]

Basically @Syskaw is expecting qs.parse('data[]=snow&data[]=&data[]=hey%20oh') to result in { data: ['snow', '', 'hey oh'] }.

[dougwilson]

Oh, and FWIW, this is not a regression from qs < 1, just something users tend to find weird.

[nlf]

Ah, so users are expecting the empty strings to stay in place for arrays? I'll take a look and see if that change would break anything, but I don't imagine it will.

[dougwilson]

so users are expecting the empty strings to stay in place for arrays?

it seems that way. I saw that pop up on twitter last night, but i've seen other people asking the same time every so often.

[dougwilson]

mainly something to consider ;) up to you guys how you want to approach it.

[nlf]

Looks like we already had this behavior for arrays where an index is specified, so I'll add some official tests and make sure it works for normal arrays too.

[dougwilson]

make sure it works for normal arrays too

cool. if you guys change it, i'll make sure to rush out an update for the stuff pinned to 1.0.2

[nlf]

Closed via 5b63418