Whitespace is removed from fields, preventing the creation of new records when the field format requires spaces

[grantfitzsimmons]

Hi.

We’ve run into a problem with the formatting of our Loan numbers in Specify 7 (v7.8.13).

Our loan number consists of three parts: the year the loan was prepared; a four digit number separated from the year by a forward slash; and the herbarium acronym of the borrowing institution, separated from the four digit number by a space.

For example: '2023/0021 NY ’ is the loan number for the 21st loan we prepared in 2023, which was sent to the herbarium at the New York Botanical Garden (NY). The acronym field is 6 characters, so when the acronym has fewer characters we add enough spaces after the acronym to make it 6 characters long.

The problem we have is that Specify 7 doesn’t seem to accept a loan number that ends in a space, meaning that we are unable to edit and save our Loan records in Specify 7. We are using Specify 6 also, so we are able to edit our Loans in 6, but perhaps future versions of Specify 7 could be made to allow Loan numbers to end in a space? Thanks!

It seems that the whitespace-trimming feature in Specify 7 is causing issues in this case. Apologies for the inconvenience.

Just to recap– in Specify 6, entering 2023/0021 NY would retain the space, matching the field format configured in your collection.

However, in Specify 7, entering 2023/0021 NY results in the space being removed. This interpretation as 2023/0021 NY prevents the record from being saved.

There is no perfect solution at this time. It seems the original data entry behavior existed as a workaround due to Specify requiring a fixed amount of characters for a field's format. This is something that we'll need to account for when expanding and improving the field format system in the future.

Reported By: Nimal on the Speciforum at Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria

[specifysoftware]

This issue has been mentioned on Specify Community Forum. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.specifysoftware.org/t/loan-number-format-in-specify-7/1455/2

[specifysoftware]

This issue has been mentioned on Specify Community Forum. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.specifysoftware.org/t/loan-number-format-in-specify-7/1455/3