[EP-tech] Email MetaField validation

[Matthew Kerwin]

In our ePrints installation we decided to make things a little easier on the human when importing eprints, by relaxing validation to allow leading and trailing whitespace.  To accommodate this relaxation I modified EPrints::MetaField::Email, adding a form_value_basic method that subsequently strips said whitespace, thus:

----------
sub form_value_basic
{
	my $self = shift;
	my $v = $self->SUPER::form_value_basic( @_ );
	# strip leading and trailing whitespace
	$v =~ s/^\s+|\s+$//g;
	return $v;
}
----------

Is this the right approach, or is there a better point where I can intercept the data before it hits our back-end store?  And if this is the right place for sanitisation, should the method be patched in upstream?

Further, is there a reason that any meta-field would ever want leading and trailing whitespace?  Whatever approach ends up being used to sanitise the data, should it apply to all meta-fields, or just email?

Cheers
-- 
Matthew Kerwin | Web Developer | TILS | Digital Repository Team | Level 2, I Block, Kelvin Grove | ph 3138 3910 | matthew.kerwin at qut.edu.au | CRICOS No 00213J