[TYPO3-50-general] Discussion of MVC with validation error messages

[Sebastian Kurfürst]

Hey everybody,

today I want to discuss three issues with you I have came across when  
reviewing the code. They are all related to MVC and validation, and  
fixing them might break backwards compatibility.

First: Inside the ActionController, there is a method called  
"initializeActionMethodArguments", which parses the @param annotations  
and collects the method parameters. If no method parameter has been  
set (i.e. there is no @param annotation, and it is not of an object  
type), then "Text" is being used. I think this is dangerous: The user  
gets "Text" although he might have wanted something different, and the  
error might only be seen in rare cases.
What do you think of throwing an exception in case no type has been  
specified? I think this would be only consistent, and give the user an  
error right away.

Second: Concerning Validation and the default errorAction: If I got it  
correctly, the __referrer is evaluated for referring back to the  
originating page where the error occured. Additionally, the _current_  
arguments are being passed onto the _last_ action. I think quite  
strange things can happen then, f.e. you can have mandatory parameters  
which are not passed to the previous action :-( Do I have some  
thinking error or is this the case? I think this whole issue can lead  
to very strange behavior...
Maybe this can be solved by adding all current request parameters to  
__referrer, and just using them again?

The first problem is easy to solve, but has to be discussed first, and  
the second one is more difficult to solve I think... I just wanted to  
post it here, in case somebody of you has a great idea :-)

Another thing which we really need to talk about: How will all these  
conventions get documented? I think documentation writing should be a  
really important task in the next weeks, as there is _a lot_ of stuff  
undocumented. I know that things have been moving really fast  
recently, but they should slowly settle down, and thus there should be  
some docs available soon.
As soon as the documentation structure for the MVC part is clear, I'd  
as well like to help out documenting some parts as I feel that it is  
really important!

Greets and thanks for your time and opinions,
Sebastian

--
Gimme five!