I understand a new tool form module is rolling out in the next few weeks. Will anything change in the HTML <form> hidden input submit fields? Right now tool forms have the equivalent of:

<form id="tool_form" name="tool_form" action="../../../tool_runner" target="galaxy_main" method="post" enctype="application/x-www-form-urlencoded"> <input type="hidden" name="refresh" value="refresh"/> <input type="hidden" name="tool_id" value="bccdcSelectSubsets"/> <input type="hidden" name="tool_state" value="3865326638 .... 1323033303764"> <input type="hidden" name="input" value="4246"/> <input type="hidden" name="incl_excl" value="1"/>

... and then on to the visible fields.

Currently one of my galaxy tools "blast_reporting" generates an html report (form) which users can view and select items and submit - which calls another tool with just the right parameters, as above, including tool_state value which is copied once from viewing source of the live target tool form. 2nd tool immediately generates the desired dataset. I know html form approach is a hack but it works and it keeps things simple (its never part of a workflow).

However, a nice feature for the new tool form engine would be to have the tool state accept an empty value="" for initial submission of forms. Is that possible?

That way I wouldn't have to bother with one other yucky installation step for my blast_reporting tool where one has to manually view source of an instance of the target tool (bccdcSelectSubsets above) and retrieve the generic tool_state field value setting.

d.