$files->render() returns an empty string instead of an empty array

[BernhardBaumrock]

I'm using $files->render() in RockFrontend to get the result of AJAX endpoints. If the endpoint returns an array, RockFrontend will automatically set the content type to application/json.

Today I realised that if my file returns an empty array, ProcessWire will not return an empty array but an empty string!

This is ok:

// foo.php
return ['foo' => 'foo'];

// render-foo.php
$result = $files->render(__DIR__ . '/foo.php');

// result will be ['foo' => 'foo']

This is not:

// bar.php
return [];

// render-bar.php
$result = $files->render(__DIR__ . '/bar.php');

// result will be '' and not []

@ryancramerdesign is this intentional?

I have added a workaround in RockFrontend but I think when the files returns and empty array the result should be an empty array and not an empty string.

[ryancramerdesign]

@BernhardBaumrock That function is a front-end to the TemplateFile class, which uses output buffering to capture the standard output into a variable. I don't think output buffering supports anything but strings. You'd probably need to use a $a = include('file.php'); (where file.php has a return []) in order to get an array. So from that standpoint, maybe it's something that the $files->include() function could be updated to support, but probably not the render() function.

[BernhardBaumrock]

@ryancramerdesign sorry I don't understand. When I return ['foo' => 'bar'] in the rendered file the result will be an array, but when I return [] it will be an empty string. This does not make sense to me?

[ryancramerdesign]

@BernhardBaumrock Upon closer inspection, I missed that we'd added support for this in the TemplateFile class. It will use the return value of the include() if it's a non-empty value, and not include()'s default return value of integer 1, and ob_get_contents() DID return an empty string. I added an additional check to it so that an empty array isn't considered an empty value, so it can return empty arrays now.

[BernhardBaumrock]

Awesome, thx :)