Draft for UNIVERSAL DATA ACCESS syntax

Gadgets in pages will need a universal syntax for specifying the location of their property value in the database. These will be stored in data-object attributes of HTML tags.

This syntax must delve inside of JSON objects, and work on any of the system tables. Not only quads.

It would be good to have this syntax match with Java Script Object Notation (JSON) itself so that it can be used in the browser without translation.

QUADS
<context>.<subject>.<verb>.value
<context>.<subject>.<verb>.JSON.value

TABLES (since all rows in all tables now have row ids)
<table>.row.<field>.value
<table>.row.<field>.JSON.value

PHP
<file>.<property>.value
<file>.<property>.JSON.value

But let's use square brackets for variability in the path. That is directly equivilent to JSON and will allow these to be used inside html attributes without parsing issues with < and > being inside a tag, even if quoted.

Finally, the system needs to know what type it is. An easy way is a prefix.

quad:context.subject.verb
quad:context.subject.verb.JSON.property

table:name.row.field
table:name.row.field.JSON.property

file:name.property
file:name.property.JSON.property

Then for varibility we only have a few things varied in the whole system. Mainly.

<id> = thought id
<gid> = gorup id
<group> = group name or group id
<uid> = author (user) id
<cid> = comment id
<tid> = tag id
profile = an author specifed by profile group

Each of those can be represented by [name] and replaced out of the current context.

Quad for a user profile-image

user.[uid].profile-image

which would easily translate simply by spliting on '.' and some substitution to
to pure JSON as

['user']['1810']['profile-image']

and json objects in values can be auto detected and translated to an object under the JSON property so that

user.[uid].data.JSON.firstname

would become

['user']['1810']['profile-image']['JSON']['firstname']

and perfectly access the value.

On the PHP side it would translate similarly to

{'user'}->{'1810'}->{'profile-image'}->{'JSON'}->{'firstname'}

in fact the two could be translated back and forth simply by replacing ][ with }->{ and the ends.

Thus any value in a quad, table, or file can be retrieved or stored with this simple syntax. The only remaining issue is contextual security and translation security.

I think both could be handled by an API validator that worked from dictionaries of valid path components in the current context.

This means that no field or property name can contain a period or a square bracket. Fortunatly this is already the case as far as I am aware.

The table syntax is sufficient for items that come out of the database initially such that the row ID is already available. Retrieving any table value on-the-fly would require a WHERE clause. That is entirly practical but will need more elaborite security to prevent tampering. An easily securable alternative could use named WHERE clauses stored server side and then only the name need be verified secure in a context.

proudly scribed using markdown?

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Holmes says
This is not something that I plan to implement all at once. But things like the profile editor are growing fast and now want to branch out into the group table to edit group title … so I might as well start using this where it applies and grow it as it is needed.

With a system like this I only need to fill in data-object attributes in html tags and everything else is fully automatic. Cuts maintenance and expansion down to near zilch … just add the html element to a template, specify a field validator, and it’s done.

Draft for UNIVERSAL DATA ACCESS syntax

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