Datasource group by author causes fatal error

[jensscherbl]

When grouping a datasource by Author and no Author field exists in this section, I get the following error in the frontend where the datasource is included:

Fatal error: Call to a member function groupRecords() on a non-object in .../symphony/lib/toolkit/data-sources/class.datasource.section.php on line 516

I looked into the code and it looks like the Author option is showing up on purpose, even if no Author field exists, but I don't understand the code well enough to fix it myself.

That's Symphony 2.3.4, by the way.

[iwyg]

can you drop the line?

[jensscherbl]

can you drop the line?

I don't think the real problem is in class.datasource.section.php where the error is actually thrown.

I guess it's something in content.blueprintsdatasources.php, but not sure about it.

[jensscherbl]

Now it's getting even more interesting.

If I add an Author field and resave the datasource, I get the following in my XML output.

<error>Data source output grouping is not supported by the <code>Author</code> field on 1049 of file .../symphony/lib/toolkit/class.field.php</error>

Also, there's no empty option in the Author field select box when the field is required. Not a real problem, but not consistent with the Select Box and Select Box Link fields.

[brendo]

There's a bit of weirdness here.

• The Author field can only group when allow multiple selection is allowed
• Grouping should only happen when the Author field exists (bug)
• The Author field doesn't implement the groupRecords function (bug) so it falls back to the the default Field implementation which is throwing an unsupported exception

It appears all these bugs have been there for some time! Resolving now.

[jensscherbl]

Thanks. Just stumbled over this while fixing a bug in (and testing) my multilingual extension.