[Zope] Building a list programmatically under DTML

[Michel Pelletier]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Timothy Grant [mailto:tjg@avalongroup.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 1999 5:19 PM
> To: Kevin Dangoor; Zope Folk
> Subject: Re: [Zope] Building a list programmatically under DTML
> 
> > <ul>
> > <dtml-in desc>
> > <li><dtml-var sequence-item></li>
> > </dtml-in>
> > </ul>
> 
> Unfortunately, neither the above, nor any other kinds of list making,
> paragraph making or line breaking give me what I expect. The 
> about I get
> is always in "list" format
> 
> ['item 1', 'this is item 2', 'I am the third item in the list']
> 
> So, I *know* its a list, why won't the "in" tag work, do I have to do
> some sort of name space tweaking?
> 
> Also, I should pass along that the list is passed to the form 
> using the
> following html snippet
> 
> <input type="hidden" name="desc:list" value="<dtml-var desc>">

A Ha!  This will pass the *string* '['item 1', 'this is item 2', 'I am
the third item in the list']' as *one item in a list*.  You cannot pass
along python objects through HTML <input> elements, they are just too
simple.  All they can provide is a mapping between a name and a string
value.

To do so, you would need to _build_ your hidden input fields:

<form action...>
<dtml-in desc>
  <input type="hidden" name="desc:list" value="<dtml-var
sequence-item>">
</dtml-in>
</form>

This will put an <input...> in your HTML for every element in the list
'original_list'.  When the 'action' of this form gets called, ZPublisher
will marshal all of the <input...>s into a list called 'desc'.

And then your code will work.

-Michel