[Apc-aa-coders] IDS - maybe a change to make - lets discuss

[Mitra <mi...@mi...>]

Hi

There is a lot of code, and a lot of mistakes, that happen around the 
different representations for  item ids. We have at least four that I 
know of:
Short id: Sequence of Item in database, used in shorter urls 
especially in views
Packed id: 128 bit packed, stored in database
Unpacked id: 32 character, used in urls
Tagged ids: For example where an x is on the front of a packed id to 
indicate bidirectional.

An example of a Sysadmin mistake was where recently I used related 
items window and stored the string, which then broke something using 
it as a related items link. I had to switch to store item ids.

The reason this came up for me, is that I need a way to add a meaning 
to related item links, which is hard with since a multi-value field 
(like a related item) can only contain one piece of data. I was 
thinking of extending the related item window to allow me to redefine 
the buttons.

What I'm thinking is to add a "class itemid" which would refer to an 
item.  This could be initialised with either shortid, packed, 
unpacked or tagged, and then could - via methods - return any of the 
alternatives e.g.

foo = new itemid(123)
#new itemid(1234567890abcdef1234567890abcdef)

and then foo->packed;

I would use lazy evaluation to do the conversion, i.e. only 
generating the flavors needed.

What do you think?

If we like the idea, I would see it programmed in gradually, i.e. I 
define the class, and its methods and then it can be integrated only 
when we are working on some part of the code.

- Mitra

P.S. I'd still like a hint on how to create a new "item" refering to 
an item id, this would be very useful for use of the site module, but 
I can't figure out if this is possible.


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