PropertyType.MULTI_CHOICE

[labkey-matthewb]

Rationale

First story of MultiChoice epic.
Support PropertyType.MULTI_CHOICE and JdbcType.ARRAY
DataRegion Form for support <input> and <select multiple>

Related Pull Requests

Changes

[github-actions]

ERROR: A pull request from fb_multichoice is expected to target develop, not fb_tvf_string_array

[Copilot]

Pull Request Overview

This PR adds support for multi-choice (array-valued) text properties to the LabKey platform. The implementation extends the existing text choice validator to handle collections and introduces a new MULTI_CHOICE property type with associated display and input handling capabilities.

• Extends TextChoiceValidator to validate both single string values and collections
• Adds new MULTI_CHOICE PropertyType with corresponding JdbcType.ARRAY support
• Introduces MultiChoice.Array class for handling array values with conversions
• Updates display and input rendering logic to handle multi-select controls

Reviewed Changes

Copilot reviewed 15 out of 15 changed files in this pull request and generated 3 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
TextChoiceValidator.java	Extended validation logic to handle Collection values in addition to String values
PropertyServiceImpl.java	Enhanced validator registration to support multiple lookup keys (URI, short name, full name)
HtmlString.java	Added SP constant for space character
DomainKind.java	Added allowMultiTextChoiceProperties() method (defaults to false)
PropertyType.java	Added new MULTI_CHOICE enum value with array handling logic
TableViewForm.java	Updated to use constants for field and array markers
Table.java	Added typed parameter support in SQL WHERE clause construction
SQLFragment.java	Added add(Object, JdbcType) method for typed parameters
MultiChoice.java	New file introducing array handling infrastructure
JdbcType.java	Added ARRAY type and minor formatting fix
DisplayColumn.java	Enhanced JSON type handling for arrays/collections and fixed input value retrieval
DataColumn.java	Updated form input rendering to support multiple selected values
ColumnRenderPropertiesImpl.java	Added special handling for MULTI_CHOICE with ARRAY type
ColumnRenderProperties.java	Fixed conversion logic and added array type recognition
ColumnInfo.java	Added MultiChoice.DisplayColumn factory logic and removed unused import

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[XingY]

It's still unclear to me how are we going to support comma character in choice. TabLoader would have stripped the enclosing quotes from "a,b" and then ARRAY needs to decide if this is a single choice a,b or [a, b]. But sure that can be dealt with in a later story.

[labkey-matthewb]

See PageFlowUtil$TestCase.testGoogleSheetMultiValue(), the string value will be
a, b, "A,B"
This will then get escaped according to the rules of the particular file file format. This will look much better in a TAB separated file thans COMMA separated file.

[XingY]

a, b, "A,B" will parse to array.
but what about just "A,B"? TabLoader would have stripped the enclosing quotes so we still have to decide if it's A,B or [A, B]

[labkey-matthewb]

RowId, MultiChoice
5, "a, b, ""A,B"""

[labkey-matthewb]

It's kinda like writing a regular expression in a .java file. Regex has it's own escape rules and Java strings have their own escape rules. And you have to nest them.

[XingY]

Maybe we should start disallowing domain fields to end with [].

[labkey-matthewb]

Maybe. I convinced myself this was OK, because this looks like Spring's form binding syntax (e.g. Spring will interpret mycolumn[0]=1). I could change it to be a prefix instead of a suffix like @.