:author: Keryn Knight :version: 0.1.0

If Django_ had support for parsing nested query-string and form-encoded data, and the existing Forms API supported nested data, what would that look like, and how much of a RESTy API could be built on such?

Currently, this is just a parser capable of dumping structured query-string data in the form of::

a[][item]=4&a[][item]=5&a[][item]=6

into a data-structure like::

{'a': [{'item': 4}, {'item': 5}, {'item': 6}]}

It mostly tries to conform sensibly(ish) to Rack_ and jQuery-BBQ_ (and is in fact a semi-transliteration of the latter) but skirts certain edge cases I'm not brainy enough to solve ... That basically means I'll throw an exception for "malformed" data.

Eventually, I've got plans for a bunch more. But this is absolutely currently just an experiment in how far I'll be able to take things

An optimistic list of the things I'd like this to achieve, regardless of if I currently know how. Off the top of my head:

• Nested structure support for normal web forms & query strings, like PHP, Rack and jQuery-BBQ_ have.

  • circuit-breaking of those nested values if they surpass a given limit (following e.g. Django's DATA_UPLOAD_MAX_NUMBER_FIELDS_)

• The ability to use the Forms API to describe nested data, for both input parsing and output.

• Flexible parsing and content-negotiation based on those Forms.

• OpenAPI_ generation from the very same Forms, so I can have nice Swagger UI_ or ReDoc_ output.

  • Ideally, I want the ability to do this for anything I can detect as being a form-based view.

.. _Django: https://www.djangoproject.com/ .. _jQuery-BBQ: https://benalman.com/projects/jquery-bbq-plugin/ .. _PHP: https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.parse-str.php .. _Rack: https://rack.github.io/ .. _DATA_UPLOAD_MAX_NUMBER_FIELDS: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.0/ref/settings/ .. _OpenAPI: https://swagger.io/ .. _Swagger UI: https://swagger.io/tools/swagger-ui/ .. _ReDoc: https://github.com/Redocly/redoc