[FE-discuss] Form validation problems using CGI vs mod_python request dict

[Ben B. <be...@gr...>]

I'm having some problems with formencode operating on a multi-part form
returned by a CGI, vs that returned by mod_python. In mod_python, the dict
in a multi-part form that contains a File upload looks like this:

{'city': 'Petaluma', 'photograph': Field('photograph', ''), 'firstName':
'Ben', 'title': 'stuff', 'middleName': '', 'lastName': 'Bangert',
'enableCache': 'True', 'philosophy': '', 'state': 'CA', 'token': 'habba',
'specialties': '', 'expertise': '', 'submitButton': 'Submit', 'education':
'', 'company': '', 'email': 'be...@gr...', 'biography': ''}

(The photograph field is the file upload)

This works just fine with the form schema, however when switching over to
using Fast CGI (thus the form is parsed with the cgi module), the same
request dict looks like this:

{'city': FieldStorage('city', None, 'Petaluma'), 'photograph':
FieldStorage('photograph', '', ''), 'firstName': FieldStorage('firstName',
None, 'Ben'), 'title': FieldStorage('title', None, ''), 'middleName':
FieldStorage('middleName', None, ''), 'lastName': FieldStorage('lastName',
None, 'Bangert'), 'enableCache': FieldStorage('enableCache', None, 'True'),
'philosophy': FieldStorage('philosophy', None, ''), 'token':
FieldStorage('token', None, 'habba'), 'email': FieldStorage('email', None,
'be...@gr...'), 'state': FieldStorage('state', None, 'CA'),
'specialties': FieldStorage('specialties', None, ''), 'expertise':
FieldStorage('expertise', None, ''), 'submitButton':
FieldStorage('submitButton', None, 'Submit'), 'education':
FieldStorage('education', None, ''), 'company': FieldStorage('company',
None, ''), 'biography': FieldStorage('biography', None, '')}

The error this generates during validation is:

Error:
Error: not indexable
File:
/usr/local/lib/python2.3/cgi.py line 594
Context:
 591: def keys(self):
 592: """Dictionary style keys() method."""
 593: if self.list is None:
594: raise TypeError, "not indexable"
 595: keys = []
 596: for item in self.list:
 597: if item.name not in keys: keys.append(item.name)
Traceback:
 /usr/local/lib/python2.3/cgi.py:594
 /usr/local/lib/python2.3/cgi.py:618
 /usr/local/lib/python2.3/site-packages/formencode/api.py:198
 /usr/local/lib/python2.3/site-packages/formencode/api.py:223
 /usr/local/lib/python2.3/site-packages/formencode/schema.py:118
 /usr/local/lib/python2.3/site-packages/formencode/api.py:207
 /usr/local/lib/python2.3/site-packages/formencode/api.py:223
 /usr/local/lib/python2.3/site-packages/formencode/htmlform.py:67

This is caused during the form.validate(request_args) call.

Is anyone else using formencode with multi-part forms and the CGI module? Is
there some quick way to fix this, or is a patch to formencode required to
test the dict values for FieldStorage instances?

I've noticed the dict is flat with the CGI module if its not a multi-part
encoded form, its only the multi-part bit which seems to dump the values
into FieldStorage instances.

Thanks,
Ben