GET /records/{field-name}/{field-value} doesn't handle blanks

[nacnudus]

Context

• RFC code:

There is an endpoint to find all records that share a field-value for a particular field.

Explanation

The endpoint doesn't support filtering for records that don't have a value in a field. Compare:

• https://country.register.gov.uk/records/end-date/1991-12-25.json
• https://country.register.gov.uk/records/end-date/.json. This link should return all countries with blank end-dates.

This behaviour isn't documented.

[arnau]

@michaelabenyohai @gidsg interesting one that highlights even more the collision between RFC0002 and faceted records.

Side-note: We are treating /record/GB.json and /record/GB/.json the same I presume because we ignore trailing slashes /record/GB == /record/GB/. Am I right in thinking that?

[arnau]

#39 Proposes changing facets to use a querystring. If accepted, it is thinkable to use something like /records?name=end-date&value= to filter by empty values. Given that now the blob normalisation ensures an empty string is a nullable value, this value= expression should work well.