Bug in Jason's Date Input Calendar..I think

[bennebw]

Hi, All,

I'm using Jason's Date Input Calendar (found here at DD) in a to-do list web app, and it's giving me some fits.

I have several forms that I move around the list dynamically to allow you to add items to list items in an ajaxy way. The trouble is whenever another form gets moved below Jason's Date Input Calendar in the Document model, the calendar loses it's refernce to the form. I get the message "this.getHiddenField()" is null or not an object.

The other two forms are Contacts form and Add Sub-Item form. As long as I move them higher in the list (and document model), it works, but as soon as one fo those forms is below the calendar...ERROR!

Would anyone know how to get the calendar attached to my Calendar form by ID instead of using THIS.

If you want to try it for yourself, you'd need to create an account for yourself at www.SugarDo.com. I haven't built the public list feature yet. [ Note: I have made a work around by moving all the other forms up upon showing the calendar form. Would still like to get this fixed. ]

Any help would be great! Best regards,
Byron

[jscheuer1]

That probably isn't a bug. You are inserting elements to the page and possibly removing one or more as well. This could throw off the the order of, and possibly the value of and/or end the existence of other elements. When you say 'ajaxy', that doesn't tell us much. If you are using innerHTML at all, that will only compound matters, especially with form elements. That's because even replacing an existing form element that you are wiping out with the innerHTML method often results in the document tree not recognising it in the same way any longer. This will happen all the time in any script that initializes an element like that onload. Even relying solely on DOM methods like createElement and appendChild, if you wipe out something that the script needs or change the order of elements in any case where the script is relying upon that order, it won't be happy.

[bennebw]

Hi, John. Thanks for your reply.

Here's a bit more info:

One thing I should note is that after much tinkering I finally determined what the problem was by removing the contact form from my code. In my development, I had added the AddDueDateForm before adding ContactForm. This worked fine, as AddDueDateForm was the last form in the Document model. A week later, I added the ContactForm. It took me a week to realize that DueDate had stopped working. The ContactForm was in the original HTML below AddDueDateForm. Even without doing any dynamic movements in the Client browser, the Calendar wouldn't work. So I rebuilt my code to add ContactForm before AddDueDateForm in the original HTML. That fixed it until I moved those forms around dynamically.

All form movements are done using Prototype's Move method. We can eliminate this as the problem since it doesn't work when the contact form shows up below the duedate form, even without using the move method.

No innerHTML is used in manipulating the forms. Just using Prototype's Move, Hide, Show methods, plus "display: none;".

I imagine that if you added a form to the bottom of the demo page on dynamic drive, it might experience a similar issue. Either that, or I'm doing something pretty whacked out.

Thanks for your help!

Byron

[jscheuer1]

Without investigating the methods used by prototype.js, there is no way to be certain what it is doing. If adding a form after the form that was previously working messes things up, that would be strange indeed, unless the added form contained an element that could be somehow confused with an element from the first form. Adding or moving something before a previously working form or moving the working form after another form could, for a variety of reasons cause a problem.

If these forms that you are talking about have scripts associated with them for processing or display purposes - aside from any moving - these scripts could be in conflict.

[bennebw]

John,

I did a brief test adding just two forms on a page and the calendar works fine regardless of the order, so that doesn't appear to a proble.

Evidently, I've got something going on in my scripts that are conflicting. The workaround I have is working fine (dynamically moving (and hiding) the AddItemForm and ContactsForms to the top of the document whenever the DueDateForm is shown - for some reason this works fine.), so I'm going to go with that.

I appreciate your help!
Byron

[ivanpointer]

Hey guys,

I have a great solution for this problem that works for me. I simply added a parameter which is FormName. You pass in the name of the form that contains the calendar component now and this is used to keep track of the appropriate form/date component.

I also needed to change the function for generating the component to accommodate the extra parameter (the original code checks the number of attributes during generation).

The updated .js file is attached.

[Lockworld]

ivanpointer,

I just ran into this same problem on my site and tried out your updated js file, and it worked like a charm. Thanks for posting this!

After several days of pulling my hair out trying to figure out why my data was not being submitted properly, this solution fixed everything beautifully.

Just wanted to say "thank you" since no one else has yet.

[ivanpointer]

I am glad it was of use!