Dynamic table for popup_menu

Question

I'm trying to attach some dynamic information to a popup_menu (pulldown) object in the export dialog.
I'm retrieving the data through an asynchronous task such as:
SYPNEventResults = '';
local LrDialogs = import "LrDialogs"
local LrHttp = import "LrHttp"
import "LrTasks".startAsyncTask( function()    
    SYPNEventResults, hdrs = LrHttp.get( "http://dev.seeyourphotos.net/cgi-bin/lightroom-event-list.cgi?photographer_id=20060207")
end )
This does succcessfully query the server and place a chunk of values in the SYPNEventResults variable like this:
{ title = "Lab Event", value = "Lab Event" },
{ title = "Karsten", value = "Karsten" },
When I try to use this to populate the contents of the pulldown object (below), what is shown is all of the
values as one long string rather than a list of events to choose from.  I'm presuming I'm missing a setp to
bind this somehow differently.
viewFactory:popup_menu {
        items = {
            SYPNEventResults
       value = LrView.bind('eventname2'),
       width_in_chars = 40,
In summary, I'm trying to popuulate a custom dialog pulldown where the user selects from an event list retrieved from the server where that value can in turn be used in other parts of the dialog/ftp upload.
I'm new to Lightroom, so please take that into account in your answer.
Thanks in advance for any help.

Answer 1

I've never used dynamically changing popup items variable before, and I'm not sure it will work(?)
But, if it's displaying a long string, it does not sound like 'items' is being assigned a proper table yet.
I don't know what you mean by a  "chunk" of values. I assume you mean table.
In any case, if SYPNEventResults[1].title is a string, then SYPNEventResults[1].value can be any legal lua type.
Likewise for SYPNEventResults[2], SYPNEventResults[3], ...
If you can index/display the title with this syntax, e.g. LrDialogs.message( SYPNEventResults[1].title ), then the popup should be initialized thusly:
viewFactory:popup_menu {
       items = SYPNEventResults,
       value = LrView.bind('eventname2'),
       width_in_chars = 40,
if a function is returning multiple values, then to get it into a table "array", do this:
local tableArray = { myTableArrayFunc( myTableArrayParameters ) }
Does this help?
Rob