[dev] Re: [imp] whitelist patch...

[Jan Schneider]

Quoting Amith Varghese <amith at xalan.com>:

> > Pass back the general success/failure message in $message, the overall
> > success/failure code in $code, and all the extra information you need
> in
> > $userinfo (which addresses failed, which were duplicates, etc.).
> 
> $message is a mixed type (either a string or another PEAR_Error object).

No, as proposed by Chuck it should (and can) always be a PEAR_Error.
 
> The problem with a general success/failure message is that it is possible
> when
> adding an address to a blacklist that the address could either exist or
> not
> exist in the blacklist.  If the address is in the list I would like to
> print
> 
> "amith at xalan.com is already in your blacklist"
> 
> If the address is not in the list I would like to print
> 
> "amith at xalan.com has been added to your blacklist"

The possible return types, as defined by the Notification backend are
'horde.message', 'horde.success', 'horde.warning' and 'horde.error'.
In this case you might want to use success and warning.
 
> So what would be the general success/failure message in this case?  I
> would like
> to pass back both but I can't pass an array here without serializing the
> array
> or imploding it.  I didn't think that was a good idea because I looked
> through
> some of the code and it seems like serialize is only used to put arrays
> within
> sessions or write them to the backend.

Why do you think you need to serialize anything? Serializing is only
necessary if you want to store complex types in a string context. You don't
leave PHP here, so there's no need to serialize anything. That is as long as
you know what the called method will return.
 
> The last problem I'm having with this solution is that i want to pass
> back a
> list of addresses that were added successfully and a list that already
> existed
> in the blacklist.  However $userinfo is a string and the only way i can
> think of
> again is to pass information back using serialize()

I would recommend you to take a closer look at the notification backend. The
notify() method take an optional PEAR_Error as the parameter, using its
error code as the notification level and its error message as the
notification message.

So why don't you just create a PEAR_Error with the error code
'horde.success' if all addresses have been added, 'horde.warning' if only
some addresses have been added and, if you like, 'horde.error' if no
addresses have been added. The latter is not necessary imo as I still
wouldn't call it an 'error'.

As the error message you tell the user what actually happened. Like "address
A and B have been added" or "address A has been added. address B already
exists." You get the idea.

You can then pass this object unmodified and unchecked to the notification
backend that cares about the correct notification type and spits out the
result of the action as a clear text message.

Jan.

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