"Form does not specify an instanceID" after second submission in an encrypted project

[dbemke]

ODK Collect version

the store version 2023.1.2, the beta version 2023.2 Beta 3

Android version

10, 13

Device used

Redmi 9T, Pixel 6a

Problem description

After sending a second submission of the form AuditTest to an encrypted project on Central there is the error saying that the "form does not specify an instanceID”. It only happens after sending the second submission, the first submission is sent to Central without any errors.
The error also contains "saved as finalized" referring to the previous design.

Steps to reproduce the problem

1. Scan the QR code with the encrypted project.
   https://test.getodk.cloud/#/projects/469/app-users
2. Fill in and send submission of AuditTest form.
3. Fill in and send submission of AuditTest form again.

Expected behavior

I don’t know the cause of the issue so I don’t know if the error should appear after the first submission or the form is broken or maybe it’s something related to encryption.

Other information

I uploaded the form to other project in Central and there were no warning or errors connected with the form while uploading.

[seadowg]

I've been trying to boil this down to a minimal form reproduction and ended up with this:

<h:html xmlns:h="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:jr="http://openrosa.org/javarosa"
    xmlns:orx="http://openrosa.org/xforms" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2002/xforms">
    <h:head>
        <h:title>Missing instance ID</h:title>
        <model>
            <instance>
                <data id="missing_instance_id" version="1">
                    <orx:meta>
                        <instanceID />
                    </orx:meta>
                    <text1 />
                </data>
            </instance>
            <bind calculate="concat('uuid:', uuid())" nodeset="/data/orx:meta/instanceID" readonly="true()" type="string" />
            <bind nodeset="/data/text1" type="string" />
        </model>
    </h:head>
    <h:body>
        <input ref="/data/text1">
            <label>Question 1</label>
        </input>
    </h:body>
</h:html>

Basically if I finalize this form twice, the second instance with have a blank instance ID. There's two changes I can make to the form to fix the problem:

1. I can switch the way the instanceID is assigned to the way pyxform would output (with jr:preload)
2. I can Remove the orx namespace from meta

After about it with @lognaturel, we realised that rather than it working for the first "instance", it actually only works for the first form session - if you open the form, discard it and start again you'll also end up with a blank instance ID for the first instance. This would suggest that the problem is related to form def caching.

As far as I can see, there's nothing incorrect with the form, so I'm pretty sure this is a bug rather than a form design problem.

[lognaturel]

@seadowg and I briefly discussed. It's an issue with namespaced references (e.g. /data/orx:meta/instanceID) and forms deserialized from the form cache. getodk/javarosa#695 We ultimately decided that there wasn't enough value to supporting this to take it on. It doesn't really appear to be a part of XPath and downstream tools would need to be namespace-aware for it to make a difference.

I think we should update the test form and that's it.

[seadowg]

Marking this as "won't fix". @dbemke you should be able to run the test form back through XLSForm Online or pyxform to fix the problem.