furl do not handle multiple parameters of the same name about furl HOT 5 CLOSED

f.args is an ordered multivalue dictionary (https://github.com/gruns/orderedmultidict).

For ease of use and interoperability with other Python libraries, orderedmultidict
retains method parity with Python's dict. That's why only one value is returned with
f.args['Subject'] -- Python's dictionary only supports one value per key.

To access the other Subject values, use orderedmultidict's multivalue methods, like
getlist() and setlist().

>>> from furl import furl
>>> f = 'http://localhost:8080/foo?Subject=aa&Subject=bb'
>>> f.args.allitems()
[('Subject', 'aa'), ('Subject', 'bb')]
>>> f.args.getlist('Subject')
['aa', 'bb']
>>> f.args.setlist('Subject', ['uno', 'due', 'tre'])
>>> f.url
'http://localhost:8080/foo?Subject=uno&Subject=due&Subject=tre'

See orderedmultidict's documentation here:
https://github.com/gruns/orderedmultidict/blob/master/API.md.

Does that answer your question?

from furl.

Thanks for the explanation, in fact I overtaken this limitation iterating onto f.args.allitems() (good to know about other API like setlist).

Still, this library can be pure gold in URL manipulation (which is always a mess) and I'm wondering if this issue can be fixed keeping high-level API: lot of web frameworks use repeated parameters on URLs.
A good behavior can be to store items with the same parameter as a list of values, something like:

f = furl('http://www.google.com/?one=1&one=2')
f.args['one'] = [1, 2]

(maybe this is not possible due to internal limitation).

Apart of that: really cool library. Thanks.

from furl.

f.args['one'] = [1, 2]

is weak API design because lists and strings behave similarly, forcing users to
check the type of the values in f.args.

Imagine you want to get the length of the parameter &one=. The natural way is

>>> print len(f.args['one'])

But this is ambiguous.

>>> fs = furl('http://google.com/?one=abc')
>>> fl = furl'http://google.com/?one=a&one=b&one=c')
>>> print len(fs.args['one'])
3
>>> print len(fl.args['one'])
3

To defeat this ambiguity, furl users would be forced to repeatedly test whether
f.args values are strings or lists

>>> fl = furl'http://google.com/?one=a&one=b&one=c')
>>> if isinstance(f.args['one'], basestring):
...   # Handle string.
... else:
...   # Handle list.

That's cumbersome and confusing.

That said, I'm all for improving orderedmultidict's API. It's loquacious. But
allowing f.args values to be lists bleeds ambiguity into the API.

Does that answer your question?

from furl.

Yeah, probably a list with strings inside is not the best.

Maybe the args property should return a custom object instead of a simple string, something like...

>>> f = furl('http://google.com/?one=a&one=b&one=c')
>>> f.args
<Params something>
>>> len(f.args)
1
>>> len(f.args['one'])
3
>>> f.args['one'][0].value
'a'

...but this will probably add too much complexity to the library (and probably 90% of the users are happy with the current features set).

Thanks for the support! 🍻

from furl.

To be clear, orderedmultidict (https://github.com/gruns/orderedmultidict) is
exactly that 'custom object'.

See https://github.com/gruns/orderedmultidict/blob/master/API.md.

Thank you again Luca. Don't hesitate to let me know if there's anything else I
can do for you.

from furl.