I use HTTP 422 to signal that a form was submitted with bad data,
which i believe is the correct status code: “indicates that the server
understands the content type of the request content […], and the syntax
of the request content is correct, but it was unable to process the
contained instructions.”[0]
htmx, however, treats all 4xx status codes as error and, by default,
does not swap the target with the response’s content. Until i found out
that i could change that behaviour, i worked around this limitation by
returning HTTP 200 for htmx requests, but it is a waste of time given
that htmx _can_ accept HTTP 422 as a non-error.
[0]: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110#name-422-unprocessable-content
I was repeating myself a lot for this use case, because each one needed
a different URL and SQL query, however they were kind of structurally
similar and could be refactored into common functions.
This was requested by a potential user, as they want to be able to do
whatever they want to do to these lists with a spreadsheet.
In fact, they requested to be able to export to CSV, but, as always,
using CSV is a minefield because of Microsoft: since their Excel product
is fucking unable to write and read CSV from different locales, even if
using the same exact Excel product, i can not also create a CSV file
that is guaranteed to work on all locales. If i used the non-standard
sep=; thing to tell Excel that it is a fucking stupid application, then
proper applications would show that line as a row, which is the correct
albeit undesirable behaviour.
The solution is to use a spreadsheet file format that does not have this
issue. As far as I know, by default Excel is able to read XLSX and ODS
files, but i refuse to use the artificially complex, not the actually
used in Excel, and lobbied standard that Microsoft somehow convinced ISO
to publish, as i am using a different format because of the mess they
made, and i do not want to bend over in front of them, so ODS it is.
ODS is neither an elegant or good format by any means, but at least i
can write them using simple strings, because there is no ODS library
in Debian and i am not going to write yet another DEB package for an
overengineered package to write a simple table—all i want is to say
“here are these n columns, and these m columns; have a good day!”.
Part of #51.
Since most of PL/pgSQL functions accept a `uuid` domain, we get an error
if the value is not valid, forcing us to return an HTTP 500, as we
can not detect that the error was due to that.
Instead, i now validate that the slug is indeed a valid UUID before
attempting to send it to the database, returning the correct HTTP error
code and avoiding useless calls to the database.
I based the validation function of Parse() from Google’s uuid package[0]
because this function is an order or magnitude faster in benchmarks:
goos: linux
goarch: amd64
pkg: dev.tandem.ws/tandem/numerus/pkg
cpu: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6200U CPU @ 2.30GHz
BenchmarkValidUuid-4 36946050 29.37 ns/op
BenchmarkValidUuid_Re-4 3633169 306.70 ns/op
The regular expression used for the benchmark was:
var re = regexp.MustCompile("^[a-fA-F0-9]{8}-[a-fA-F0-9]{4}-4[a-fA-F0-9]{3}-[8|9|aA|bB][a-fA-F0-9]{3}-[a-fA-F0-9]{12}$")
And the input parameter for both functions was the following valid UUID,
because most of the time the passed UUID will be valid:
"f47ac10b-58cc-0372-8567-0e02b2c3d479"
I did not use the uuid package, even though it is in Debian’s
repository, because i only need to check whether the value is valid,
not convert it to a byte array. As far as i know, that package can not
do that.
[0]: https://github.com/google/uuid
I want this button, as well as the submit button, to be on a row below
the filters’ input, especially for quotes and invoices, that have the
most filters and looks weird with the button wedged in. Thus, i added
a <fieldset> around all the filters.
Closes#69
There was no explicit `order by` in the queries that list the products
of quotes and invoices, so PostgreSQL was free to use any order it
wanted. In this case, since was am grouping first by name, the result
was sorted by product name.
This is not an issue in most cases, albeit a bit rude to the user,
except for when the products *have* to in the same order the user
entered them, because they are monthly fees or something like that, that
must be ordered by month _number_, not by their _name_; the user will
usually input them in the correct order they want them on the invoice or
quote.
Sorting by *_product_id does *not* guarantee that they will always be
in insertion order, because the sequence can “wrap”, but i think i am
going to have bigger problems at that point.
Closes#63
We need to have contacts with just a name: we need to assign
freelancer’s quote as expense linked the government, but of course we
do not have a phone or email for that “contact”, much less a VATIN or
other tax details.
It is also interesting for other expenses-only contacts to not have to
input all tax details, as we may not need to invoice then, thus are
useless for us, but sometimes it might be interesting to have them,
“just in case”.
Of course, i did not want to make nullable any of the tax details
required to generate an invoice, otherwise we could allow illegal
invoices. Therefore, that data had to go in a different relation,
and invoice’s foreign key update to point to that relation, not just
customer, or we would again be able to create invalid invoices.
We replaced the contact’s trade name with just name, because we do not
need _three_ names for a contact, but we _do_ need two: the one we use
to refer to them and the business name for tax purposes.
The new contact_phone, contact_web, and contact_email relations could be
simply a nullable field, but i did not see the point, since there are
not that many instances where i need any of this data.
Now company.taxDetailsForm is no longer “the same as contactForm with
some extra fields”, because i have to add a check whether the user needs
to invoice the contact, to check that the required values are there.
I have an additional problem with the contact form when not using
JavaScript: i must set the required field to all tax details fields to
avoid the “(optional)” suffix, and because they _are_ required when
that checkbox is enabled, but i can not set them optional when the check
is unchecked. My solution for now is to ignore the form validation,
and later i will add some JavaScript that adds the validation again,
so it will work in all cases.
We have shown the application to a potential user, and they told us that
it would be very useful to have a total in the table’s footer, so that
they can verify the amount with the bank’s extracts.
I have to use a value to be used as “none” for payment method and
contact. In PL/pgSQL add_quote and edit_quote functions, that value is
NULL, while in forms it is the empty string. I can not simply pass the
empty string for either of these fields because PL/pgSQL expects
(nullable) integers, and "" is not a valid integer and is not NULL
either. A conversion is necessary.
Apparently, Go’s nil is not a valid representation for SQL’s NULL with
pgx, and had to use sql.NullString instead.
I also needed to coalesce contact’s VATIN and phone, because null values
can not be scanned to *string. I did not do that before because
`coalesce(vatin, '')` throws an error that '' is not a valid VATIN and
just left as is, wrongly expecting that pgx would do the job of leaving
the string blank for me. It does not.
Lastly, i can not blindly write Quotee’s tax details in the quote’s view
page, or we would see the (), characters for the empty address info.
jordi fita mas