Previously entered event name displayed in lists My Venue, My Organizer

[Jim]

When entering a community event as a logged-in user (possible as anon?) a previously entered event name is displayed as a selectable option from the drop-down lists for Event Organizer and Event Venue as one of My Venues/My Organizers.

[George]

Sorry to hear about this Jim!

To get started, can you share your system information with us? Here’s how to do so → https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/sharing-sys-info/

I don’t have this issue on my local site so am wondering if it’s theme or plugin conflict perhaps – but before jumping to that conclusion I’ll look over your System Information and see what I can learn.

Thank you!
George

[Jim]

This reply is private.

[George]

I appreciate this information, @Jim! There is nothing here that stands out as problematic, so I unfortunately think that doing the full set of troubleshooting steps here will be the best step → https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/testing-for-conflicts/

Let us know what you find if you do these steps!

Thank you,
George

[Jim]

Hi George,
We just went live so there are many priorities, but I’m working through testing scenarios and will update this thread.

[George]

Thanks Jim! I’m really sorry that these issues have arisen right now, as you’re launching your site – take your time and keep us posted on things!

Sincerely,
George

[Jim]

Hi George,

This could be it; and I may have discovered my title description wasn’t quite accurate. :\ . I had been testing for multiple errors and described this one poorly.

Add an organizer or venue with no name and it is saved as “Unnamed Organizer” or “Unnamed Venue”. This should be prevented by requiring a name be input if other editable org/venue data fields are not null. Multiple “Unnamed Organizer” or “Unnamed Venue” items may be created. Perhaps unlimited venues and organizers.

Something in TEC is producing those names from somewhere, and without validation/testing.

[George]

Hey @Jim,

Thanks for the update here. The features you describe here are built-in to the plugin are not buggy/problematic behavior; they’re there by design:

Add an organizer or venue with no name and it is saved as “Unnamed Organizer” or “Unnamed Venue”

The problem, of course, is that these values should remain and should not be overwritten by event names like you describe in your first post here; but unfortunately I just cannot reproduce this bug at all, which makes it hard to figure out the source of the problem (and thus a solution for it) 🙁

What I described here is still your issue, right? Apologies for misunderstanding your descriptions of things if not! If the event-names-being-used-for-blank-organizers issue is not happening anymore, let me know!

[Jim]

What I described here is still your issue, right?

Actually, this is specifically not the issue. I’ll restate the problem:

A venue or organizer data entity may be created without a name: if the name field is left empty the name “Unnamed Organizer” or “Unnamed Venue” is assigned by the plugin. Any number of “Unnamed Organizer” or “Unnamed Venue” entities may be created, each with the same programatically assigned, generic and identical, meaningless name. Any of these organizers/venues may be identical to another. Any number of events may each have a unique org/venue that can not be distinguished by name.

Scenario – In a list of venues or organizers the entities cannot be differentiated:
When adding a new community event a user may be presented with dropdown selectors containing unlimited lists of identically named venues/organizers without a method of distinguishing one from another. At best *yet another* organizer/venue is created, further orphaning events, organizers and venues from each other.

This situation may be repeated at will using the current versions of the plugin and add-ons.

The appropriate correction would be to disallow the creation of an organizer or venue without the entry of a unique name for the organizer or venue.

[George]

Hey @Jim,

Thanks for elaborating on what you see as the issues here, and clarifying them as this:

The appropriate correction would be to disallow the creation of an organizer or venue without the entry of a unique name for the organizer or venue.

This is unfortunately a bit tricky to do, but we have a knowledgebase article covering the basics of the customization: https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/required-fields-for-events-submission-form/

You can specify the requirement of the venue name or organizer name values by requiring specific elements on the $_POST array upon submission.

—

I apologize for the roundabout way of arriving here –  I misread comments in your posts like this one:

Something in TEC is producing those names from somewhere, and without validation/testing.

I read that and thought that there was some additional, more elaborate code-conflict situation here.

— George

[Jim]

No apologies required 🙂
We’re getting somewhere with required fields using the snippet from the last link provided!

Except …

The snippet segment provided for organizer name does not work; copied verbatim:

if ( empty( $_POST['organizer']['Email'] ) )
        $fields[] = 'Organizer Email';
 
    return $fields;

The submission proceeds as normal when the Organizer email field is blank.

Edit: updates applied
The Events Calendar – version 3.12.3 installed. Update to 3.12.5
The Events Calendar: Community Events – version 3.12 installed. Update to 3.12.1
The Events Calendar PRO – version 3.12.4 installed. Update to 3.12.6

• This reply was modified 10 years, 5 months ago by Jim. Reason: versions

[George]

Hey @Jim, I was able to produce the same problems and we’ve unfortunately uncovered a bug here where our code doesn’t allow custom required fields for organizers ever since we implemented the new “Multiple Organizers” features.

We have to update the code to fix this and then also the documentation, of course – I am very, very sorry about this.

I will push to get these updates made as soon as possible!

— George

[Jim]

Thanks for the update, George. How can I track these updates, or provide a reference to someone, allowing them to follow up?

[George]

Hey @Jim,

There are a few places where broadcast plugin updates. First, this twitter account: @TheEventsCal. Next, the blog on this site: http://theeventscalendar.com/blog

And then of course if you have your license key entered on your site, you’ll get notified there too.

Cheers!
George

[George]

I will close up this issue for now just to keep things organized and focused; if you have any other issues at all, open a new thread and we’ll continue the conversation there! 😀

Cheers,
George

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