Weird behavior of views date filter plugin on validation of exposed form input

It seems to me that Date->validateValidTime() is only fitting for calls coming from validateOptionsForm() - and it was re-used for validateExposed() but without realizing that $this->options['expose']['identifier'] has another structure then. For me it's not clear what is going on here - but I think that validateValidTime() will never really work when a validation is done for exposed filter input - which apparently is only done when the field is required.

I just solved it now the following way for my custom filter plugin:

  public function validateExposed(&$form, FormStateInterface $form_state) {
    if (empty($this->options['exposed'])) {
      return;
    }
    $value = &$form_state->getValue($this->options['expose']['identifier']);
    if (!empty($this->options['expose']['use_operator']) && !empty($this->options['expose']['operator_id'])) {
      $operator = &$form_state->getValue($this->options['expose']['operator_id']);
    }
    else {
      $operator = $this->operator;
    }

    $this->validateExposedValidTime($this->options['expose']['identifier'], $form_state, $operator, $value);
  }

Changes: no stop of validation just because the field is not required, Replaced validateValidTime method call to call my custom validation method.

The method looks like this. The first parameter in this case is a string and instead of calling $form_state->setError() in case of a fals value I use $form_state->setErrorByName():

  protected function validateExposedValidTime(string $elementIdentifier, FormStateInterface $form_state, string $operator, array $value) {
    $operators = $this->operators();

    if ($operators[$operator]['values'] == 1) {
      $convert = strtotime($value['value']);
      if (!empty($elementIdentifier['value']) && ($convert == -1 || $convert === FALSE)) {
        $form_state->setErrorByName($elementIdentifier, $this->t('Invalid date format.'));
      }
    }
    elseif ($operators[$operator]['values'] == 2) {
      if (!empty($value['min'])) {
        $min = strtotime($value['min']);
        if ($min == -1 || $min === FALSE) {
          $form_state->setErrorByName($elementIdentifier, $this->t('Invalid date format.'));
        }
      }
      if (!empty($value['max'])) {
        $max = strtotime($value['max']);
        if ($max == -1 || $max === FALSE) {
          $form_state->setErrorByName($elementIdentifier, $this->t('Invalid date format.'));
        }
      }
    }
  }

As I am not sure what these changes may cause for other views filter plugin extending the Date class, for the options form and in the many other use cases I just adjusted it for our custom plugin as I can assure that it works how it should... but maybe this may help

Nice find. I agree validateExposed just seems like some copy/pasta of validateOptionsForm and in its current state will not work at all.

So a complete rewrite and some test coverage are probably in order.

dylan donkersgoed → made their first commit to this issue’s fork.