Nested structures with build_query_string

Rails
#1

hi all!

just recently i encountered a problem when giving a hash to
ActionController::Base#url_for that itself includes a hash, e.g.,
{:action => ‘search’, :query => {:field1 => ‘value1’, :field2 =>
‘value2’}}.

the corresponding URL looks like
“/search?query[field1]=value1&query[field2]=value2&commit=Search”.

however, the URL built by url_for looks like this:
“/search?query=field1value1field2value2&commit=Search” – which is
obviously incorrect.

this is caused by ActionController::UrlRewriter#build_query_string,
which does recognize arrays, but not hashes. rewriting that method
to build the query string recursively for nested structures lead to
the following:

---- snip ----
def build_query_string(hash, only_keys = nil)
elements = []

build_element = lambda { |key, value|
# skip empty params
return if value.nil? or value.empty?

case value
  when Array
    value.each { |v|
      build_element.call "#{key}[]", v
    }
  when Hash
    value.each_pair { |k, v|
      build_element.call "#{key}[#{k}]", v
     }
  else
    elements << "#{key}=#{Routing.extract_parameter_value(value)}"
end

}

(only_keys || hash.keys).each { |key|
build_element.call CGI.escape(key.to_s), hash[key]
}

elements.empty? ? ‘’ : ‘?’ + elements.join(’&’)
end
---- snip ----

this works for the above mentioned case, nonetheless a few questions
arise:

  1. what do you think about this? does it make sense? is it “good” ruby?

  2. where shall i put the modified method? in my lib/ directory i
    have util/extensions/* which all get included in environment.rb –
    this, however, didn’t seem to work. webrick spits out warnings

./script/…/config/…/vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/routing.rb:660:
warning: already initialized constant Helpers
./script/…/config/…/vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/routing.rb:714:
warning: already initialized constant Routes

and i get the following exception: “No url can be generated for the
hash […]”. modifying action_controller/url_rewriter.rb in place
wouldn’t be the preferred way to go, now would it…

thanks for your comments.

cheers
jens

–
Jens W., Dipl.-Bibl. (FH)
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