Item11253: Can RestPlugin users rely on Foswiki::Meta's _indices data member?

This is really good functionality, this plugin gives. Is it possible getting a formfield value with javascript? PATCH works for setting a formfield.

I know it's probably coming, but thought creating a task would be at least a little helpful, for testing etc.

Tips from Harvey in the mean time is either parse the topic text with javascript, since that's what RestPlugin GET gives atm, or use a STARTSECTION which takes web, topic and formfield as parameters from and URL with the section parameter.

-- LarsEik - 14 Nov 2011

Actually, I meant something like:

foswiki.RestPlugin.get(
    'System/FAQDownloadSources',
    {
        element: 'topic',
        encoding: 'json',
        success_callback: function (response) {
              var TopicSummary = response.FIELD[response._indices.FIELD['TopicSummary']].value;
            alert(TopicSummary);
        }
    }
);

-- PaulHarvey - 15 Nov 2011

Very humbly I edited topic to be replace with response when parsing the json returned from the server in your example. I had not expected that, me actually getting that to work I mean. Thanks, thanks. This is super cool. I don't get it all but _indices holds the index so it's kinda wrapped in to get the right array element? whatever works

This can be closed by my part if not some documentation or something could be updated.

-- LarsEik - 15 Nov 2011

You are correct, of course, that's the problem when I write code from my head without testing it

It definitely needs documenting, but then doing so would make us rely on _indices hanging around in the next version of Foswiki.

Sven? Crawford? Any thoughts?

-- PaulHarvey - 15 Nov 2011

yes, i don't want to rely on _indices - its part of the internal mess i'm trying to get rid of (if i have time and motivation) for foswiki2.

-- SvenDowideit - 16 Nov 2011

No, you absolutely can not rely on _indices outside of the class. The clue is in the name - a leading underscore is a perl meta-standard for indicating a private member of a class.

If this functionality is required for a plugin, it must be explicitly exposed (and appropriate thorough unit tests written)

-- CrawfordCurrie - 26 Nov 2011

I see. Will Foswiki's topic serialisation always lack a way to efficiently lookup an datum by its name then?

-- PaulHarvey - 26 Nov 2011

I think this is answered good enough here.

-- LarsEik - 18 Mar 2012

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