Improve invalid Dropdown value behavior

[brandonkelly]

Description

Improves the behavior of Dropdown fields when their value is invalid.

As of 4.4, invalid Dropdown fields which didn’t have a blank option would get a blank option prepended, and that would be selected by default in the UI (see #12235 (comment)). This would lead to a validation error on save (because a blank value wasn’t one of the allowed options), forcing the author to make a valid selection.

That confused authors because they were getting validation errors for fields they hadn’t even edited.

With this PR, invalid Dropdown fields which have a default option will now automatically select that instead, and the field will immediately be marked at changed, to indicate that the selected option is not equal to the field’s actual current value, until it’s saved.

Related issues

• [3.7.59]: Editing Dropdown field labels or values with an existing default causes a blank option to display in the list. #12262
• [4.x]: Default value of Dropdown fields are not saved when using "resave/entries" CLI option #12548
• [4.x]: Dropdown field appears blank even with a default set #13034
• [4.x]: Error when saving Dropdown field without Default option selected #13133
• [4.4.x]: Validation error if Dropdown has invalid value #13146

[linear]

DEV-1118 Set Dropdown inputs to the default value when invalid

When a Dropdown field’s value is invalid, it should be reassigned to its default value (and marked as changed).

[northform]

I've a multisite that was recently updated to 4.5.3 and there are certain select fields which have values assigned to them but they are hitting validation errors.

The errors seem to take you in an infinite loop between the sites, so editing Site A shows a validation error for Site B, then when you go to resave Site B, it shoes a validation error for Site C etc.

[brandonkelly]

@northform Could you send your Composer files and a database backup over to support@craftcms.com so we can reproduce and look into it from there?

[elivz]

I'm running into the same issue as @northform. I am having a hard time putting my finger on exactly what is going on, but I think it has to do with a dropdown field being invalid in two different sites. Craft seems to only "fix" the current site to the default option, but having that invalid value in the other site nevertheless prevents the current site from being saved, so there is no way to update either one of them.

[brandonkelly]

@elivz Cross site validation behavior is improving in the next release (see #13675 (comment)). Maybe it will solve that for you?

[elivz]

Sounds like it should, in theory anyway. Right now I have some pages that are stuck in a state where they are impossible to update short of fiddling with the raw data in the DB, so anything will be an improvement!

[brandonkelly]

Any chance you have time to test in the next few minutes as I’m preparing the release? If so and it turns out to still be a problem for you, I could try to improve it further.

If you can, then change your craftcms/cms requirement to dev-develop as 4.5.5, and run composer update.

[elivz]

Works now for me! On an entry where I was previously stuck in that validation loop between two sites, I am now able to save each site separately, which updates the dropdown fields to their default values. No errors or other issues. Thanks!

[brandonkelly]

Awesome, thanks so much for checking!