Filter on multiple string values containing commas

[AlexanderLindkjaer]

I have a big database with cars where I want to be able to do exact filtering on multiple model names. I do not have control over the formatting of these names. Some model names contains commas:
"911 RS 2, 2.7 lightweight", "911R", "550 Spyder"

Filtering on the multiple modal names by comma separation works as expected.
https://car-api/cars?filter[model]=911R%2C550%20Spyder -> "911R","550 Spyder"

Except for when the name contains a comma
https://car-api/cars?filter[model]=911%20RS%202%2C%202.7%20lightweight
-> "911 RS 2, 2.7 lightweight"
It searches for two separate values.
select * from cars where model in (?, ?) and....

I know this is expected behavior, and it works as intended.

I tried escaping the non-value-separating commas with \, / %5C%2C

I tried following #139 but don’t want to lose the ability to do filtering on multiple variables. Is there a way to have individual variable containing commas, and still be filterable?

[AlexVanderbist]

Interesting problem! I think the nicest solution would probably be to allow a different delimiter to be configured. In that case you could do something like this:

// in an app service provider
QueryBuilderRequest::setArrayDelimiter('|');

// GET /cars?filter[model]=911 RS 2, 2.7 lightweight|911R|550 Spyder

Alternatively we could make the delimiter configurable per filter - but that might overcomplicate things...

What do you think?

[aphofstede]

An alternative approach is exploding the filter values (QueryBuilderRequest.php:96) in a way that ignores the common case where a spatie comes after the comma in most natural usage. Would that help?

Example from an older project that had similar issues:

/**
 * @param string $comma_separated_string e.g. "a,b, c"
 * @return array The values between the comma's in the given string, ignoring any white space between values/separators
 */
function explode_ignoring_whitespace(string $comma_separated_string): array
{
	// Cheeky way to explode only "a" and "b, c" from "a,b, c"
	return preg_split('/,(?=\S)/', $comma_separated_string, null, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
}

// Test
var_dump(explode_ignoring_whitespace("a,b,c")); // array(3) { [0]=> string(1) "a" [1]=> string(1) "b" [2]=> string(1) "c" }
var_dump(explode_ignoring_whitespace("a,b, c")); // array(2) { [0]=> string(1) "a" [1]=> string(4) "b, c" }
var_dump(explode_ignoring_whitespace("911 RS 2, 2.7 lightweight,911R,550 Spyder")); // array(3) { [0]=> string(25) "911 RS 2, 2.7 lightweight" [1]=> string(4) "911R" [2]=> string(10) "550 Spyder" }

[AlexVanderbist]

@aphofstede thanks for the proposal but I feel like that might be too much "magic" for the default behaviour. If you need this specific exploding behaviour I think it's more appropriate to keep the filter value as a string and parse it down in a custom filter class.

[dominikb]

Would a feature PR be welcome that introduces the possibility to use custom delimiters for multiple values?

[AlexVanderbist]

PR looks solid as usual, thanks a lot! Gonna close this and merge the PR soon.

[btxtiger]

It seems the custom array delimiter is also set for includes, is this the wanted behaviour?
This makes the handling really complicated as I just wanted to be able to find this string in my database EL63PB1024Z8/24PB15X3PR0,3.482+999.

It might be easier to pass a custom delimiter to AllowedFilter::exact as parameter to be more flexible:

AllowedFilter::exact('id', 'ref_id', true, '|'),