[dev] RFC: array values for preferences

[Chuck Hagenbuch]

Quoting Jan Schneider <jan at horde.org>:

> - As we don't know the possible structure of the array (it might even be
> a multidimensional one) we had to walk through the array's values and
> convert each them separately. This works fine as long as the value is 
> either in ascii (the case with all enum/true-false/numeric preferences we 
> provide) or from a user input (where we know the charset he uses). It 
> might get problematic if we have preference values from a third source. Do 
> we?

I'm not sure. Things like email filters might be a problem here?

> - We need to automatically unserialize preferences if they match
> /^a:\d:\{.+\}$/ in hope that we don't catch any strange preferences that
> match it too but aren't serialized arrays (unlikely).

That seems acceptable, though not ideal to have to run a regexp on every
preference. Maybe we can flag in the prefs.php files which prefs need
encoding/decoding like this?

> Btw, noone responded so far to my question how we should deal with login
> data (user names and passwords). Do we have to assume that non-ascii
> characters are allowed and actually used?

I just don't feel I know enough about it to say, sorry.

-chuck

--
Charles Hagenbuch, <chuck at horde.org>
must ... find ... acorns ... *thud*