Selectors can only be strings, newlines make selectors buggy

[theoretic]

Hi there! And thanks for Processwire!

It appears that i've found something interesting about PW selectors. They should only be strings! Here's an example of SQL-like syntax for selector:

$my_complex_selector = "
name='some name',
parameter=123,
other_parameter=[subparam>=subvalue]
";

Trying to use this selector lead to a very buggy PW behaviour. It appears that newlines are treated in a very special manner by PW selector engine, preventing the newlined selectors from working as expected.

I cannot imagine a situation when an unescaped newline could be a part of selector or selector value, so stripping newline symbols from selector could be a good idea for further PW development. And, currently, another good idea is to write complex selectors as PHP arrays:

$my_complex_selector = [
"name=$name",
"param1=$param1",
];

and to implode them into a single line before using find() and other functions which use selectors.

Sorry if i wrote something trivial, but having this post already present at support forum could save me a couple of hours. Hope mine will save that tame for someone else ?

[Zeka]

@theoretic

Actualy there are two options for writing selectors as associative arrays and reqular arrays. 

https://processwire.com/blog/posts/processwire-3.0.13-selector-upgrades-and-new-form-builder-version/#selector-engine-array-support

[theoretic]

@Zeka, thanks! The built-in selector array representation is good for relatively simple queries. But i couldn't find any example of correct select array syntax for cases like

my_repeater = [ my_repeater_field1=value1, my_repeater_field2>value2, my_repeater_field3%=value3 ]

I suppose that there's some array syntax for cases like this but i could'n find it.

[adrian]

8 minutes ago, theoretic said:

@Zeka, thanks! The built-in selector array representation is good for relatively simple queries. But i couldn't find any example of correct select array syntax for cases like

my_repeater = [ my_repeater_field1=value1, my_repeater_field2>value2, my_repeater_field3%=value3 ]

I suppose that there's some array syntax for cases like this but i could'n find it.

You might find what you need in this post: https://processwire.com/talk/topic/19024-selector-arrays-with-page-reference-fields-with-and-not-or/