Re: Patch: Required fields on inital PR creation

[Yngve Svendsen]

At 16:42 15.10.2002 -0700, Mel Hatzis wrote:
> Please review (and hopefully accept) the following patch that fixes a bug
> in the 'on-change require' functionality and also expands the Gnats grammar
> to allow for "required input fields" upon initial PR creation.
>
> 1/ The "require { fields }" functionality that's part of the on-change edit
>    options for a field is only doing a check for field_value == NULL 
> right now
>    (rather than also checking for empty strings). Since field values are
>    generally initialized to an empty string (upon creation), the 'require'
>    clause is basically useless. The patch adds a check for field_value == "".
>
> 2/ It is extremely useful to allow the Gnats administrator to configure
>    Gnats so that a predefined set of fields must be assigned a value upon 
> initial
>    PR creation. Together with the field's own 'on-change require' clause, 
> this
>    allows for fields that can never have a null (blank) value.
>    Allowing the Gnats administrator to enforce non-null fields this way 
> provides
>    a powerful mechanism toward improved data integrity.

This doesn't work quite as it should with multitext fields. If a field is 
in the initial-entry fields list, both send-pr and Gnatsweb will include it 
when they submit PRs, even if it is empty. In the submitted PR text, these 
fields will contain newline character but nothing else. This slips past the 
require functionality that this patch implements.

I suggest we also check for space characters, as defined by isspace(), by 
making the following trivial change:

Index: edit.c
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/gnats/gnats/gnats/edit.c,v
retrieving revision 1.58
diff -u -p -r1.58 edit.c
--- edit.c      24 Oct 2002 12:45:09 -0000      1.58
+++ edit.c      27 Oct 2002 19:29:43 -0000
@@ -1105,7 +1105,7 @@ applyChangeAction (ChangeActions action,
   while (fields != NULL)
     {
       const char *fldval = get_field_value (pr, oldPR, fields->ent, NULL, 
NULL);
-      if (fldval == NULL || *fldval == '\0')
+      if (value_is_empty (fldval))
        {
          setError (err, CODE_INVALID_PR_CONTENTS,
                    "Required field %s missing from PR %s.",
Index: file-pr.c
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/gnats/gnats/gnats/file-pr.c,v
retrieving revision 1.48
diff -u -p -r1.48 file-pr.c
--- file-pr.c   24 Oct 2002 12:45:09 -0000      1.48
+++ file-pr.c   27 Oct 2002 19:29:43 -0000
@@ -446,7 +446,7 @@ missing_required_fields (const DatabaseI
   while (fields != NULL)
     {
       const char *fldval = get_field_value (pr, NULL, fields->ent, NULL, 
NULL);
-      if (fldval == NULL || *fldval == '\0')
+      if (value_is_empty (fldval))
        {
           setError (err, CODE_INVALID_PR_CONTENTS,
                     "Required field %s missing from new PR - cannot submit.",





- Yngve