Relax validation constraint on Observation value field

[mlm483]

Expected Behavior

When Observations are sent to BreedBase via BrAPI, any string should be valid for the Observation value field.

Details

In /lib/CXGN/Phenotypes/ParseUpload/Plugin/Observations.pm, on line 227, the following regular expression is used to check for invalid characters: [^a-zA-Z0-9,.\-\/\_:;\s]. As a result, POSTing Observations with characters such as "?" in the value field produces an error.

After discussing this with everyone at the lab meeting today, I believe this whole validation of the value field should be removed. The only remaining concern is whether there are other parts of the code that rely on this constraint.

See the BrAPI spec for Observation.

For Bugs:

Environment

Steps to Reproduce

[nickpalladino]

@nmenda I had a similar issue in the phenotype file saving code. It was causing issues for us when trying to do Field Book file uploads due to not allowing spaces. I removed the alphanumeric validation constraint and made a few other changes to support our use case of creating variables with BrAPI and using those to sync with Field Book using BrAPI or through Breedbase file export / import. You can review the PR at Breeding-Insight#117 and let me know if you'd be interested in having those changes upstream.

[mlm483]

@nmenda I also opened a PR on Breeding Insight's fork (because this is a blocker for us), if you'd like to take a look: Breeding-Insight#118.