Contrib.social

Empty strings ("") passed in as contextual filter argument aren't considered missing

Open on Drupal.org →
Created on 22 January 2019, about 6 years ago
Updated 7 February 2023, about 2 years ago

Problem/Motivation

If an empty string ("") is passed in as contextual filter argument, it isn't considered a missing argument but is filtered against.

This was raised before in #2815863: Contextual filter values of "" don't trigger "When the filter value is NOT available" → against D7 Views module, and originally came up in #1699378-20: Allow tokens in entity reference views selection arguments → and was considered a Views (now: Core) bug in #1699378-94: Allow tokens in entity reference views selection arguments → .

Steps to reproduce

Example:

      $arguments = [ 
        0 => '', // is processed in query
        1 => NULL, // is skipped and default argument or default action is used
        2 => 'foo' // is processed in query
      ];

      /** @var \Drupal\views\ViewExecutable $view */
      $view = Views::getView($target_id);
      $view->setArguments($arguments);
      $view->preExecute();
      $view->execute();

An empty string as argument could be an result of a token replacement like this:

$value = '[node:field_with_no_user_input]';
$token_data = [$entity->getEntityTypeId() => $entity];
$token_service = \Drupal::token();
$arguments[] = $token_service->replace($value, $token_data);

Proposed resolution

I think sanitizing the empty string to no argument given is the expected behavior. We should however think twice making sure there really isn't a usecase for the current behavior resp. no sitebuilder's assumption might be broken.

Remaining tasks

TBD

User interface changes

TBD

API changes

TBD

Data model changes

TBD

Release notes snippet

TBD

🐛 Bug report
Status

Needs work

Version

10.1 ✨

Component
Views  →

Last updated about 12 hours ago

Created by

Pancho UTC+2 🇪🇺 EU

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  • Needs manual testing

    The change/bugfix cannot be fully demonstrated by automated testing, and thus requires manual testing in a variety of environments.

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It's likely this issue predates Contrib.social: some issue and comment data are missing.

  • Comment about 2 years ago →
    🇺🇸United States smustgrave

    This issue is being reviewed by the kind folks in Slack, #needs-review-queue-initiative. We are working to keep the size of Needs Review queue [2700+ issues] to around 400 (1 month or less), following Review a patch or merge request → as a guide.

    For the issue summary update requested in #29

  • Comment 9 months ago →
    🇳🇱Netherlands ricovandevin

    We have a similar issue that is also resolved by this patch. In our case we have a contextual filter on taxonomy term, configured to default to the term set on an entity reference field on a node. When no value is selected on the node, the \Drupal\taxonomy\Plugin\views\argument_default\Tid (taxonomy_id) ViewsArgumentDefault plugin also returns an empty string. This even leads to an error without the patch:

    TypeError: Cannot assign null to property Drupal\views\Plugin\views\argument\ArgumentPluginBase::$operator of type string in Drupal\views\Plugin\views\argument\ArgumentPluginBase->unpackArgumentValue() (line 1302 of core/modules/views/src/Plugin/views/argument/ArgumentPluginBase.php).

  • Comment 2 months ago →
    🇳🇿New Zealand quietone

    Removing credit added earlier because 🐛 If computed view argument is empty the default value or action is not used Needs review was re-opened.

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