phantom required fields

TeamSite 6.5 Solaris

A user fills out a template. Tries to save. Gets an error message that not all required fields are filled out.
Then the catch comes - there are no fields in the template with a "!" by them saying they are required. So there appears to be nothing required that is missing.

First order of business was making sure there was not some javascript causing problems. So, all FormAPI code (save handlers, form validation, and all sorts of other stuff) was disabled. It still would not save. Then all required fields were made not required. Bang. Saved fine. Turn javascript back on, and still saves fine with required fields.

So, there appears to be something that causes the template to think there are incorrectly filled out required fields. But what?

To further complicate things, the DCRs that are having problems are 'slave' DCRs. A DCR is created in one branch. Then a skeleton is created in this branch. The user can open the skeleton and enter data and save it. However, they cannot create a new DCR in that branch. The slave DCR also reads in components from the master as it is loaded.

These DCRs worked fine in TS 5.5, though run in to the save problem in 6.5.

Any ideas on where to check for problems? Perhaps the skeleton needs to contain all the fields? (Instead of just 3 metadata fields as we have now?) Or maybe some container is creating problems?

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Comments

Adam Stoller

Are there any fields which are hidden that might be required? Apparently FormsPublisher is picky about required fields being filled in - even if they're hidden and cannot be accessed by the user to do so.

--fish
Senior Consultant, Quotient Inc.
http://www.quotient-inc.com

JeremyH

That was my first thought. However, there was only one hidden field in the DCT (and it is not required) There was formapi code that his some fields. However, none of these fields were required. (and the problem still occured even after this FormAPI was disabled.)

The template does have a number of replicants that can have from 0-x instances. These replicants have required fields. Perhaps FormsPublisher is seeing that the replicant has required fields, and 'failing' the template, even though there are no instances of the replicant.

tobias

We use various templates with replicants containing required fields. If no instance of the replicant is present TS does not complain about these required fields being empty. Though this is on a Win2K3 server I doubt that the behaviour would be any different on Solaris.

Did you check whether or not your template includes any other datacapture templates or snippets of them?

JeremyH

The DCT is entirely generated by a script (making it really enjoyable to debug!) However, the output is a pretty vinalla DCT - a very long one with a gazillion replicants, but not too terribly complex.

JeremyH

We just narrowed the problem down to a required field within a replicant that is nested within another replicant. Seems to be an IW bug.

JeremyH

Hmm... After further looking in to it, could be a bug on either side. The template had multiple instances of replicants defined, yet didn't require them all. It seems if the template didn't have all those in place, then it had problems. Easiest solution was to just make the fields not required.