Enforcing dialog field defaultValue

[Sebastian Kleine]

Hello,

when I create a new dialog and set a defaultValue for a field it works. But changing an existing dialog and adding new fields the defaultValue does not get applied. I understand the reason that existing field-values should not be automatically changed/overwritten and Magnolia does not know if a field is new or not.

But is there a way to enforce the defaultValue, if a field is empty (and required). Imagine I have a component that is used 100 times. And I have to add a new (required) field with a given default value "abc". Someone would need to manually add the default value on every page save or I need to write a script to do that automatically. Is there a better way?
If the dialog field is required, than it would even generate an error when saving the form, because the field would be empty - even though it has a default value.

Or is it possible to have a feature request to Magnolia to add something like "enforceDefaultValueIfEmpty" property for dialog fields. That would for me massivly improve the defaultValue property.

Sebastian

[Roman Kovařík]

Hey Sebastian,

unfortunately the API allows only two strategies:

- apply default values (openDialogAction/populate=false)

OR

- read values from the persisted item (openDialogAction/populate=true)

https://docs.magnolia-cms.com/product-docs/6.2/Apps/App-configuration/Action-definition.html#_general_action_definition_classes

We would recommend to use e.g. a groovy script to update all content when adding a new property.

Solving this on UI level could introduce inconsistencies as only edited items would be updated but non edited items would still miss the new property.

Regards 

Roman