[ContactsAPI] startsWith filter

[Ben Kelly]

All,

Following up on my last message, I'd like to propose that we add a "startsWith" filter operation to ContactsAPI.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=874462

This would be useful in a number of places:

- Type ahead name completion in many apps
- Initializing letter groups in jump lists such as used in contacts app

Also, Rick and Julien have asked for this to help support the current mms work. To that end I am going to go ahead and prototype this now.

Thoughts? Is this also something that would normally be implemented using DataStore? Looking at the API for DataStore on the wiki it appears you would have to load all contacts into to memory to do this? Is this correct?

Thanks!

Ben

[Ben Kelly]

So it turns out we already do "startsWith" behavior when passing the "contains" filterOp. The mms app was running into:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=874501

So the real API question is, should we rename "contains" to "startsWith"? Or maybe alias it if we want to maintain backward compatibility?

Thanks.

Ben

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[JOSE MANUEL CANTERA FONSECA]

My understanding was that 'contains' search for the target string in any
position and not only at the starting position. Thus, I think we need both
'startsWith' and 'contains' filters

best

El 21/05/13 18:49, "Ben Kelly" <bke...@mozilla.com> escribió:

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[Ben Kelly]

On May 22, 2013, at 3:59 AM, JOSE MANUEL CANTERA FONSECA <jm...@tid.es> wrote:
> My understanding was that 'contains' search for the target string in any
> position and not only at the starting position. Thus, I think we need both
> 'startsWith' and 'contains' filters

I agree and that is what you would expect from the name "contains". The wiki is non-specific:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/WebAPI/Contacts

Unfortunately, it currently does implement startsWith functionality and we have apps, mms for example, relying on that behavior.

From what I understand there are technical issues which make "contains" complicated to implement right now. Gregor can you speak to that?

If we want to provide both "contains" and "startsWith", what is the best path? Rename the current filterOp to "startsWith" and write a bug to fix "contains"?

Thanks.

Ben