Raymond Camden's ColdFusion Blog: Issue with empty strings and Flash Forms

Issue with empty strings and Flash Forms

So I noticed something odd today. I have a selectbox in a Flash Form that has a top level option doing this:

<option value="" <cfif form.donationForm is "">selected</cfif>>All</option>

However, when I submit the form, the value is "", not an empty string. Here is a more full featured example that shows it:

<cfdump var="#form#">

<cfform format="flash">
   <cfselect name="foo">
      <option value="">Blank</option>
      <option value="1">One</option>
   </cfselect>
<cfinput type="submit" name="f1" value="submit">
</cfform>

If you change the format to HTML, it works as expected.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 25, 2005 at 4:23 PM. It was filed in the following categories: ColdFusion. It has been viewed 2,516 times and has 6 comments.

TweetBacks

Comments

[Add Comment] [Subscribe to Comments]

Comment 1 written by Brett Liotta on 26 February 2005, at 10:03 PM

You have to use value=" " in the option tage, instead of value="". make sure there is one blank space in between the quotes. this works if you want cfform to submit a true blank string.
Comment 2 written by Nathan Dintenfass on 27 February 2005, at 2:02 PM

I sure hope MACR considers that to be a bug.
Comment 3 written by barry.b on 27 February 2005, at 4:56 PM

>> make sure there is one blank space in between the quotes. this works if you want cfform to submit a true blank string.

hang, on. that's not an empty string: that's data (a space) in it! not empty in my book...

the point is that the implimentation of cfform should be consistant to html forms.

yeah, I'd consider it a bug too!

my 2c
barry.b
Comment 4 written by Raymond Camden on 27 February 2005, at 5:58 PM

I forgot to add this to my blog post, but MACR is already aware of this and the bug is logged.
Comment 5 written by Tony Bianco on 28 July 2005, at 10:40 PM

I'm running into a wall myself and I'm getting tired of searching for the answer on the web. I have cfselect forms with <option> tags in them. When I go to submit the form and I use the #FORM.theSelectName# it gives me the what is displayed to the user and not what the value of the option is.

Any answers on this one? How do you grab the value.

- Tony
Comment 6 written by Raymond Camden on 28 July 2005, at 10:46 PM

Can you show me your code? I have no problem seeing the value, and not the label, in my form posts.