Re: Some questions about file handling + some other things

On Fri, Mar 19, 2021 at 10:10:08PM +0100, Nagy Gabor wrote:
> My first question is about the web interface (and in fact, more
> general). My observations after playing with @file and @file-1 etc.
> form variables. Maybe it will be useful to others, and you can correct
> me if I am wrong:

Thanks!

> 1. Multiple file upload is supported via @file: You can use a
> <input type="file" name="@file" multiple> form input, or you can
> add <input type="file" name="@file"> multiple times. (The second
> solutions seems a bit ugly to me, it may depend on the browser.)
> This is documented in the source code, but not on the website.

I *think* this was never really documented because browser support for
multiple upload is very rudimentary as John has already commented.

> 2. By inspecting, it seems that if you want to use @file-1, @file-2,
> @file-3,... instead of the above method (because you also want to set
> some properties in the creation step), then some "-N" can be omitted.

This is correct.

> 3. You can create files (of FileClass) in the database even with
> roundup-admin, simply just do "create file ..." and setting the content
> property accordingly. (This was not obvious to me, sorry.)

Yes

> 4. I do not really understand how indexing works yet, and
> the documentation is a bit terse on that topic. I just vaguely looked
> into the code, but it seems that
> The content of files (file, msg, etc.) are indexed (?), but only if
> their type is text/plain (?). This indexing can (?) be disabled by
> explicitly setting
> 
> file = FileClass(db, "file",
>                 name=String(),
>                 content=String(indexme='no'))
> 
> in schema.py. Btw shall I install Xapian, or not? :)

All String properties are indexed, too, unless turning it off with
the indexme parameter.

> 5. The other thing I was interested in is journaling: As I see, the the
> journaling of String() property changes cannot be disabled. (In my db
> there is a "memo" for issues, which always increasing, but I did not
> want to use a FileClass for this, and the history looks ugly. But the
> history needs rewriting, anyway. ;)

The only journalling that can currently be disabled is the journalling
of Link an Multilink properties: If an item X links to an item Y, by
default on link/unlink events a journal entry *in Y* is performed. This
can be turned off. But changes of the Link/Multilink in X are still
journalled.

There is an API for modification of the journal, you can use this to
regularly truncate the journal if you want to.

> 6. Logical negation (or exclude_spec) is missing from filtering
> machinery. :) Stuff like "status_notresolved string:-1,1,2,3,4,5,6,7;"
> looks a bit strange in the page.html of the default templates... :)

In fact you can do this, there is a trick where you can use negative
numbers in the IDs to implement AND OR and NOT, I think only for
Multilink properties, though. This is only in the source code and
doesn't even have a regression test, I'm currently looking for examples
I can use for implementing a test, see
https://issues.roundup-tracker.org/issue2551119

It seems to be used in the standard template for some of the issue
properties, unfortunately I'm not using the standard template ...

> I hope I can deeply understand the code at some day, and I can commit
> patches at some point. :)

Yes, you're welcome, thanks for looking closely :-)

Ralf
-- 
Dr. Ralf Schlatterbeck                  Tel:   +43/2243/26465-16
Open Source Consulting                  www:   www.runtux.com
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