Item12868: SEARCH newline parameter does not apply to ItemTemplatefield content

I'm porting from TWiki and have a SEARCH that I am formatting into a table, the SEARCH queries a form where one of the fields contains a bulleted list. I need this bulleted list to render correctly within the containing table. This is challenging in Foswiki for two reasons; first, new lines returned from a $formfield are always transformed to <br />, which breaks rendering of the the bulleted list, and second, even if $formfield produced raw new lines those would break the render of the TML table.

related:

• TWiki SEARCH: In TWiki, the SEARCH newline parameter does apply to $formfield content.
• RecursiveRenderPlugin: TWiki's RecursiveRenderPlugin can be used to preserve TML table rendering in this case. I see Foswiki code for this extension but it is not available for installation. Why has this port not been completed?
• Item9404: SEARCH's $ formfield() doesn't return the bare formfield values: Warnings against changing behavior of $formfield.
• Item8809: SEARCH newline: CrawfordCurrie complains that documentation for newline incorrectly claims it applies to $formfield. He seems to think it should apply to $formfield, even adding a unit test for that case, but commented it out until the feature is implemented.
• Bullets in Tables?
• Including into a table cell

I solved the TML table rendering issue by installing TWiki's RecursiveRenderPlugin and using its <render> tag; the installation was unfortunately challenging since it has not been ported to Foswiki yet.

It is then possible to work-around the newline/$formfield issue by embedding a QUERY for the raw value into the SEARCH format:

%SEARCH{
   "Role$"
   scope="topic"
   type="regex"
   nonoise="on"
   header="| *Name* | *Purpose* | *Energizers* |"
   format="| [[$topic][$formfield(Name)]] | <render>$percentQUERY{\"'$topic'/Purpose\"}$percent</render> | <render>$percentQUERY{\"'$topic'/Energizers\"}$percent</render> |"
}%

I find this nested QUERY unnecessarily complex and would much prefer for the newline parameter to apply to $formfield so I could do this:

%SEARCH{
   "Role$"
   scope="topic"
   type="regex"
   nonoise="on"
   newline="$n"
   header="| *Name* | *Purpose* | *Energizers* |"
   format="| [[$topic][$formfield(Name)]] | <render>$formfield(Purpose)</render> | <render>$formfield(Energizers)</render> |"
}%

I'm attaching my suggested patch for this issue, created on http://svn.foswiki.org/tags/FoswikiRelease01x01x09. This patch updates SEARCH.pm to pass the value of the newline parameter along to Foswiki::Meta::renderFormFieldForDisplay as an attribute. During execution Foswiki::Render::protectFormFieldValue is called, and it already has code to complete the replacement. If no newline parameter is provided, then the current default behavior is maintained--new lines are replaced with <br / >.

Also included in the patch are the related changes to documentation, and uncommenting CrawfordCurrie's unit test for this feature.

This patch works on my 1.1.9 install. I don't have a functioning test environment so I have not verified the unit test.

-- DavidAllen - 26 Apr 2014

Marking this as urgent so that it gets considered for 1.2 in the tasks review.

-- GeorgeClark - 29 May 2014

Good patch. Thanks DavidAllen.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 05 Nov 2014

Commenting is disabled while not logged in