Feature request: Allow blank selections in dropdown menus on web metadata upload form

[jpk96]

@vkuznet

On the web metadata upload form, it would be helpful if dropdown menus -- especially those for optional fields -- allowed blank or unselected entries. This would improve flexibility and better accommodate cases where certain metadata is not applicable.

[vkuznet]

Peter, the web form entries, including drop-down are populated by schema values. And, various schema/beamlines can have their own requirements. I remember that @keara-soloway was working to fix some web form entries to, in fact, remove blank (empty) values. Before making any changes we need to hear consensus among all beamlines on this request and if everybody agree we should implement it accordingly. But I doubt it can be easy due to different data-types. For boolean values false, true you most likely don't want blank (empty) value in drop down. For numerical one, like beam_energy, you also most likely don't want the empty value either. How to treat all of these corner cases is unclear to me.

In other words the web interface should NOT drive the implementation, we should agree at very core level, like schema and then reflect this properly in web interface. Otherwise we'll end-up with supporting so many corner cases that convergence on single web UI for all beamlines may not converge.

[jpk96]

@vkuznet

If a key is optional, the corresponding dropdown should allow a blank or unselected entry. Conversely, if a key is required, a blank option should not be available.

A specific use case at 3B involves the processing_environment key, which is optional and only relevant when in_situ is set to true. However, the current form does not allow a blank selection for processing_environment, even when none of the listed options are applicable.

On a related note, the in_situ field is a boolean, and it appears that a blank entry is permitted there -- perhaps unintentionally.

I am tagging @ksg52 @adas42 @suchismitasarker @kenygren for any input they wish to provide on this topic.

[vkuznet]

Peter, I fixed this issue via the following commit: CHESSComputing/Frontend@4add2bd

The changes are propagated to dev instance. I would appreciate if you'll have a look and confirm that this is what you expect to see.

[jpk96]

@vkuznet Thank you for implementing the fix. I can confirm that optional string-type keys now allow blank entries, which is great. I also noticed that the "beam_energy" key does not allow a blank entry, which is consistent with the expected behavior. Regarding the boolean key "in_situ", I observed that it currently permits a blank entry. After discussing this with a few colleagues, I believe allowing a blank entry for a boolean key is acceptable, provided the key is optional. There may be cases where a boolean value is not applicable, and omitting it could be the most appropriate choice.