Suppose I want to store some data in the database, defining my own translation from user-defined strings to db representation, and vice versa. Obviously this may not work for search, but leave search aside.
To translate from user input to db representation, I can use the compute= attribute of a Field. But how can I translate from db representation to editable string? There is represent= , but it does something else. The context in which I need this is dates. I would like that, if a user leaves a date blank, I replace it in the db with a certain date (for instance, Year = MINYEAR, or YEAR = MAXYEAR, to imply that the date is far in the past or future, so that searches with < > will work properly). But, when the user edits the field, I want to restore the blank field, not have them edit a date of Jan 1, 0000 ! That would be illogical, since they never entered that date. This is a very general problem I imagine. Is there a way to define such translations between stored and editable values in web2py? Can it be added? Where would one go to add it? Luca --
