Idea: Handling Empty Arrays

[Gary_Swanepoel_-_ITB]

Is there a way to go back to allowing handling of empty arrays like how JS handles it?

Currently:

{% assign string = "," %}

{% assign stringArr = string | split : "," %}

{% if stringArr[0] %}

   This whole condition doesn't run because stringArr[0] doesn't exist

{% endif %}

Instead:

{% if stringArr[0] %}

     Doesn't run because type if false (ie. undefined);

{% else %}

     Does run because value is undefined.

{% endif %}

So currently in a situation like this:

{%assign  string = ",2,,,5" %}

These are the results.

{{ string[0] }} == '2'

{{ string[1] }} == '5'

Instead of this:

{{ string[0] }} == undefined

{{ string[1] }} == '2'

{{ string[2] }} == undefined

{{ string[3] }} == undefined

{{ string[4] }} == '5'

[Liam Dilley]

You can not have an array in Liquid Gary that is empty.

In liquid right now values can not be assigned as objects so you split a string or you have collections.

.items in a collection wont exist with no items and you should check the the whole array not to see if it has the first item or not. If you split a string into an array in javascript you will get the basic same output as your describing liquid does, this is not language specific but programming.

[Gary_Swanepoel_-_ITB]

FYI: Just an amendment to one of my lines above as I was referring to splitting a string into an array. Wasn't referring to a collection object.

{%assign  string = ",2,,,5" %}

was suppose to be {%assign  string = ",2,,,5" | split : ',' %}

Liam, if you split an string in JS you get empty values.

So (",2,,,5").split(',') becomes ['','2','','','5']

This is what I'm proposing. The above in liquid returns ['2','5']

[Stephen_Blignault1]

Not saying this is ideal, but Gary, have you considered a hack such as: (“null,2,null,null,null,5").split(',’) ?

Just throwing that out there

Cheers,

Stephen

[Gary_Swanepoel_-_ITB]

Yeah .. I have .. the reason why I’m asking if because I’ve had a few situations come of where the empty values are stored and it’s useful to be able to find the position of those value.

For example.

I have a input field where a customer can just duplicate an input filed as many times as they want. This is then store in the one webapp field as a csv. It means I don’t have to create a number of webapp fields to handle multiple data for one particular source. I can iterate through the string.

But when one of the inputs are empty is leaves an empty value in the comma separated string. So it’s useful sometimes to know which position they filled in at.

I’ve got workarounds, but I would love to a more hardcoded approach.

[Robert_K__Bell]

I'd prefer to keep the current behaviour of split, and have the JS-like behaviour available under a separate filter, such as split_sparse.

source	split: ','	split_sparse: ','
''	[]	['']
','	[]	['', '']
',,'	[]	['', '', '']
',,,'	[]	['', '', '', '']
'a'	['a']	['a']
'a,'	['a']	['a', '']
',a'	['a']	['', 'a']
',,a,,'	['a']	['', '', 'a', '', '']
',a,,,b,'	['a', 'b']	['', 'a', '', '', 'b', '']

[Gary_Swanepoel_-_ITB]

good proposal Rob. I’d be happy with this.

[Liam Dilley]

Valid methods in javascript:

- Grep

- Another array of added values where != undefined or empty (this will work in liquid as a note)

- rejoin and split (will work in liquid) (or split parse as Robert mentioned)

- filter - certain use cases

Language based definitions so your limited. Based on the feedback coming out about Liquid and where it is, I would be surprised if we see any more proper enhancements for a while

[john_stephanites]

What do you mean by that " feedback coming out about liquid"? Do you see them losing support for it?

[Stephen_Blignault1]

John, I think Liam was meaning that BC is thinking Liquid's implementation is at a mature level - inferring that perhaps minor updates like these will not happen overnight. Just my take on it.

[john_stephanites]

‌Prolly it just made me think of how Parse made all these updates and I guess it didn't go as well as they wanted so Facebook just shut it down.

[bcalpha]

Another vote for split_parse!