Question

This is an ugly one. I wish I wasn’t having to ask this question, but the project is already built such that we are handling heavy loads of validations in the database. Essentially, I’m trying to build a function that will take two stacks of data, weave them together with an unknown batch of operations or comparators, and produce a long string.

Yes, that was phrased very poorly, so I’m going to give an example. I have a form that can have multiple iterations of itself. For some reason, the system wants to know if the entered start date on any of these forms is equal to the entered end date on any of these forms. Unfortunately, due to the way the system is designed, everything is stored as a string, so I have to format it as a date first, before I can compare. Below is pseudo code, so please don’t correct me on my syntax

Input data:

'logFormValidation("to_date(#) == to_date(^)"
                  , formname.control1name, formname.control2name)'

Now, as I mentioned, there are multiple iterations of this form, and I need to loop build a fully recursive comparison (note: it may not always be typical boolean comparisons, it could be internally called functions as well, so .In or anything like that won’t work.) In the end, I need to get it into a format like below so the validation parser can read it.

OR(to_date(formname.control1name.1) == to_date(formname.control2name.1)
   ,to_date(formname.control1name.2) == to_date(formname.control2name.1)
   ,to_date(formname.control1name.3) == to_date(formname.control2name.1)
   ,to_date(formname.control1name.1) == to_date(formname.control2name.2)
   :
   :
   ,to_date(formname.control1name.n) == to_date(formname.control2name.n))

Yeah, it’s ugly…but given the way our validation parser works, I don’t have much of a choice. Any input on how this might be accomplished? I’m hoping for something more efficient than a double recursive loop, but don’t have any ideas beyond that

Okay, seeing as my question is apparently terribly unclear, I’m going to add some more info. I don’t know what comparison I will be performing on the items, I’m just trying to reformat the data into something useable for ANY given function. If I were to do this outside the database, it’d look something like this. Note: Pseudocode. ‘#’ is the place marker in a function for vals1, ‘^’ is a place marker for vals2.

function dynamicRecursiveValidation(string functionStr, strArray vals1, strArray vals2){
  string finalFunction = "OR("
  foreach(i in vals1){
    foreach(j in vals2){
      finalFunction += functionStr.replace('#', i).replace('^', j) + ",";
    }
  }
  finalFunction.substring(0, finalFunction.length - 1); //to remove last comma
  finalFunction += ")";

  return finalFunction;
}

That is all I’m trying to accomplish. Take any given comparator and two arrays, and create a string that contains every possible combination. Given the substitution characters I listed above, below is a list of possible added operations

# > ^
to_date(#) == to_date(^)
someFunction(#, ^)
# * 2 - 3 <= ^ / 4

All I’m trying to do is produce the string that I will later execute, and I’m trying to do it without having to kill the server in a recursive loop

Answer 1

I ended up performing a cross product of the data, and looping through the results. It wasn’t the sort of solution I really wanted, but it worked.