[ckan-dev] allow_partial_updates - issues with demo site - where should we be going?

[Toby Dacre]

On 13 July 2012 11:11, Sean Hammond <sean.hammond at okfn.org> wrote:

> > With the demo site we are using package_update action
> >
> > we are using allow_partial_updates when we are doing the updates - this
> is
> > great for things like not loosing all our resources when we update a
> > package however it also means that we cannot for example remove all our
> > tags as an empty tags is seen as non-existent and so the tags are not
> > updated
> >
> > What I would prefer is that tags is in pkg_dict we would update it but if
> > it wasn't we wouldn't
>
> Yes I agree, for everything in dictionaries. It's a PITA to have to pass
> the entire dict back to the CKAN API to avoid it deleting random bits
> that you're not interested in. If I just want to change a package's
> tags, for example, I should just be able to call package_update passing
> only the package ID and the tags, and this should not cause the
> package's resources (for example) to get deleted.
>
> > the problem with this is that form data is validated and an empty tag is
> > removed from that data - then when we are in the update missing tag data
> > ends up becoming [ ]
>
> You mean that if the dict that I pass to package_update has no 'tags'
> key at all, then this deletes all the package's tags? I agree this
> shouldn't change the package's tags at all, but it sounds like you're
> going to have to modify the validate code to fix that, and that could be
> hairy.
>
> The other thing is, you would be changing the behaviour of the API (all
> the *_update functions I think) so you might break clients.
>

How about a config option to change the behaviour?  I'll start by doing a
branch and seeing if all the tests still pass that would be a good sign of
things - if some fail then I think the config option would seem a way
forward.  This isn't going to happen till 1.9 if it is accepted.


>
> > It seems to me that tags = [ ] should not be seen as empty by validation
> > whereas no tags in the data should be
>
> Don't you have this backwards? tags=[] in the data _should_ be seen as
> me trying to remove all of the package's tags, no 'tags' key in the data
> should mean don't make any change to the package's tags.
>

Sorry my language may be a bit confused. I mean is that if I pass [ ] to
the validation it thinks I've passed nothing and so removes it and then
later in the process the lack of something then gets changed to [ ].

What should happen is that [ ] does not get killed by the validation and a
missing value does not get converted to [ ]

>
> > then when processing the update we should not convert None -> [ ]
>
> Yes
>
> Thanks for the feedback


> > The other option would be for me to add a more modular
> > allow_partial_updates which would allow the items to be updated/or not to
> > be more granularly controlled but this would become messy and the code
> > would look shitty
>
> Yes this sounds complicated
>
>
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