Gotcha (+ solution) for broken auto-complete fields in reports post-4.5 upgrade

[GinkgoFJG]

I just completed an upgrade for a client (from 4.3.x to 4.5.x), and I noticed some funny behavior in a report based off the Attendee List event report template. When I try to filter by event (all I have to do is click in the box), the form field tries to do an auto-complete, fails, then doesn't let me enter any more text. (This field now uses the select2 widget.)

I took a look at the row of civicrm_report_instance that corresponds to the instance in question, and in the form_values field which contains a ton of serialized form data, I noticed that event_id_value had a value of "1" (s:1:"1"). When I wiped this out (s:0:""), the problem was resolved. Event id 1 no longer exists in the database; I think select2 didn't know what to do with a nonexistent record, so it choked.

On the one hand, it's questionable whether such reports are worth saving; it's unlikely clients are using reports that reference nonexistent entities. On the other hand:

• it doesn't look good on the upgrade process,
• an "abandoned" report can be updated or copied and find new life,
• it may be easy to tell select2 to disregard the default value if the option doesn't exist

Or... maybe this is a really isolated incident and doesn't merit further attention. Discuss!

[Coleman Watts]

Not sure if it's select2 or the api that's doing the choking. I do think that adding a "safety check" somewhere in there would be a good idea, probably the approach would be to wipe any invalid values from an entityRef field before rendering it.

[Coleman Watts]

Fixed it: https://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-15803

[GinkgoFJG]

Nice.