[Zope-dev] Collector issue #30: Empty dates

[Lennart Regebro]

From: "Brian Lloyd" <brian@zope.com>
> I agree. I'd specify this by saying:
>
>   o An empty string sent from a browser for an optional_date
>     field is interpreted as a null (not specified) value
>
>   o The "internal" representation of an optional_date (the
>     value you find in the REQUEST after conversion) is
>     always either a valid DateTime instance or None

I think then the value in the fields will be shown as "None", which I don't
particularily like, even though I would rather have None as the internal
representation instead of an empty string. Is there a way to fix that, so
that date_fields set to None will be displayed as empty?

> I don't have much to add to that thread. It has the same
> backward-compatibility issue, but I don't perceive it to
> be as big an issue as the date thing (probably because
> it can be dealt with in a single line from DTML or Python).

True, it can wait. We probably need to discuss how all of this should be
handled in Zope 3 at some time, because it is a bit confusing today (thanks
mostly to the m*r*ns that made the HTML forms specification), and it easy to
mix up optional, empty and non-existent. :-) But thats another discussion.