String settings with special characters become quoted

[Brian Douglass]

I'm unsure if this is a bug in the JS scopes or in scopes themselves, but a string setting that has special characters entered into it (like `=`) end up being surrounded by quotes when pulled in the code. For example I have a string setting that I entered `abc=abc`, the result in the code is `"abc=abc"`. I find this behavior to be very odd and unexpected.

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

Hmm, I can't seem to reproduce this. I have the following setting:

    [location]
    type = string
    defaultValue = abc=abc
    _displayName = Default Location

Then in the code I'm doing:

    console.log("location : " + scopes.self.settings["location"].get_string());

And I see the output:

    location : abc=abc

No quotes.

Could you please describe your use case.

[Brian Douglass (bhdouglass)]

With the default value set I don't see the quotes, but when I leave off the default and manually put a value in myself it has the quotes. If needed I can send you the example I just created.

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

Ah, I see it now. Ok, looking into it.

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

I've tracked this issue down to a mismatch in string storage formatting between QSettings (used in unity-scopes-shell) and glib (used in unity-api).

After some discussion with the team, I think the best way forward would be to standardise on one ini parser across the board. I.e. update unity-scopes-shell to use glib via unity-api's IniParser interface.

This way, what goes in, will come out.

[Brian Douglass (bhdouglass)]

Perfect! Thank you for looking into this. Is there an ETA on when this could be released into the wild?

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

@Brian, unfortunately changes to unity-scopes-shell take considerably longer to land than changes to our bindings, so I can't promise it'll be available any sooner than 1, maybe 2 weeks.

My suggestion would be to implement a workaround in your JS code for the time being that checks for quotes either side of a settings value, then strips them out. At least this way, you can have your scope working ASAP, plus the change will be backward compatible even once the fix lands.

Something like this:

    function unquote(str)
    {
        if (str[0] === '"' && str[str.length - 1] === '"')
            return str.slice(1, str.length - 1);
        return str;
    }

then later:

    var setting = unquote(scopes.self.settings["location"].get_string());

[Brian Douglass (bhdouglass)]

Thanks for the update and the suggestion. I'll have to implement something like that.

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

Hey Brian, sorry for the really long wait.

The linked branches are finally ready for QA signoff (https://requests.ci-train.ubuntu.com/#/ticket/1129).

I'm hoping it won't be too long now for the fix to be released.

[Brian Douglass (bhdouglass)]

Wonderful, thank you for getting this fixed!