Question

I would like to achieve something I can easily do in .net.

What I would like to do is pass multiple URL parameters of the same name to build an array of those values.

In other words, I would like to take a URL string like so:

http://www.example.com/Test.cfc?method=myArrayTest&foo=1&foo=2&foo=3

And build an array from the URL parameter “foo”.

In .net / C# I can do something like this:

[WebMethod]
myArrayTest(string[] foo)

And that will build a string array from the variable “foo”.

What I have done so far is something like this:

<cffunction name="myArrayTest" access="remote" returntype="string">
    <cfargument name="foo" type="string" required="yes">

This would output:

1,2,3

I’m not thrilled with that because it’s just a comma separated string and I’m afraid that there may be commas passed in the URL (encoded of course) and then if I try to loop over the commas it may be misinterpreted as a separate param.

So, I’m stumped on how to achieve this.

Any ideas??

Thanks in advance!!

Answer 1

Well, if you’re OK with parsing the URL, following “raw” method may work for you:

<cffunction name="myArrayTest" access="remote" output="false">

    <cfset var local = {} />

    <!--- parse raw query --->
    <cfset local.args = ListToArray(cgi.QUERY_STRING, "&") />

    <!--- grab only foo's values --->
    <cfset local.foo = [] />
    <cfloop array="#local.args#" index="local.a">
        <cfif Left(local.a, 3) EQ "foo">
            <cfset ArrayAppend(local.foo, ListLast(local.a, "=")) />
        </cfif>
    </cfloop>

    <cfreturn SerializeJSON(local.foo) />

</cffunction>

I’ve tested it with this query: ?method=myArrayTest&foo=1&foo=2&foo=3,3, looks to work as expected.

Bonus. Railo’s top tip: if you format the query as follows, this array will be created automatically in URL scope ?method=myArrayTest&foo[]=1&foo[]=2&foo[]=3,3.