Anon object flavor

[kevinresol]

I am working with some API that expects key value pair to be expressed by brackets:

i.e. {obj:{key:'value'}} would be obj[key]=value

Should there be an option for that?

[back2dos]

Yeah, this one bit me already. Workaround: define a Client that will split each entry in the query string by . and wrap all but the first part in brackets. But yeah, we should properly support this ^^

[kevinresol]

We also need to support Map/DynamicAccess here.

If I am into it, where should I start with?

[kevinresol]

I am choosing between a compile-time solution or a runtime solution:

• compile time: do something like tink.QueryString.build(obj, {fieldAccess: 'bracket'}) where the 2nd param is a config which is a compile-time expression and the macro will build the writer/reader accordingly.
• runtime: do something like tink.QueryString.build(obj, codec) where codec is an instance of an runtime interface. Pros: less macro, more flexible. Cons: dynamic dispatch maybe slower

@back2dos any suggestions?

[back2dos]

Mhh, I think the performance difference will probably be negligible.

But in the context of tink_web you can't really access the query string builder or parser. So I would assume that typedefs would be annotated to recursively use one style or another, no?

[kevinresol]

Yeah, on the other hand I actually want to introduce something more flexible to tink_web in contrast to the current hardcoded approach on the reader/writers. A really rough illustration:

@:put
@:queryBuilder((obj:QueryObj) -> tink.QueryString.build(obj))
@:queryParser((query:tink.url.Query) -> tink.QueryString.parse(query))
@:bodyBuilder('application/json' => (obj:BodyObj) -> tink.Json.stringify(obj))
@:bodyParser('application/json' => (body:Chunk) -> tink.Json.parse(obj))
function foo(query:QueryObj, body:BodyObj):Noise;

[back2dos]

I like that idea.

OTOH, let's not lose sight of the use case that prompted this: picking a specific object syntax flavor. When that's all you want, this level of configuration induces quite a bit of noise. Basically, these two accomplish the same:

• @:queryFormat({ fieldAccess: 'bracket' }) typedef QueryObj) = ...
• @:queryBuilder((obj:QueryObj) -> tink.QueryString.build(obj, { fieldAccess: 'bracket' })) @:queryParser((query:tink.url.Query) -> tink.QueryString.parse(query, { fieldAccess: 'bracket' }))

The former also allows to consistently apply the same flavor for something like a set of search params available across a whole API or to use the information in something like a macro based form builder.

In any case, the two approaches are in no way mutually exclusive. The former (type based) can definitely be implemented via the latter (adhoc config based).