Date field cannot be typed in

If you have a ‘date’ field, you can no longer type the date in it explicitly. Attempting to modify an existing date also just deletes it.

You can see the behaviour in the ng-admin demo - https://marmelab.com/ng-admin-demo/index.html#/customers/edit/485 - try changing the birthday without opening the picker.

I think this was broken by https://github.com/marmelab/ng-admin/issues/899 - it used to work in an older version of ng-admin.

The problem is because maDateField watches both value and rawValue:

            scope.$watch('rawValue', function(newValue) {
                scope.value = field.parse()(newValue);
            });

            scope.$watch('value', (newValue, oldValue) => {
                if (newValue === oldValue) {
                    return;
                }

                if (!newValue) {
                    scope.rawValue = null;
                    return;
                }

                scope.rawValue = scope.value instanceof Date ? scope.value : new Date(scope.value);
            });

The problem is, if at any point an invalid date string is in the box - suppose the string ‘foo’. The following sequence happens:

• $watch('rawValue' sees foo. This is not a date object, so parse leaves it unchanged, and value is set to foo.
• $watch('value' sees foo and attempts to construct a new Date object using it. This ends up setting rawValue to an Invalid Date object.
• $watch('rawValue' sees Invalid Date. This is a date object, so parse tries to manipulate it, but fails and ends up setting the value to null.
• $watch('value' sees null and correspondingly sets rawValue to null
• $watch('rawValue' sees null and correspondingly sets value to null
• $watch('value' sees null, this is the same as the last value, and the cycle ends!

The net result is null - which removes the text you tried to write from the box.

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This is related to https://github.com/marmelab/ng-admin/issues/1271 which will be caused by a similar loop. However in that case, if you are in a timezone, the value/rawValue watches will loop, and because the ‘parse’ method applies a timezone correction the value never stabilises (resulting in the infinite loop).

[Phocea]

@matheo, if your patch fix both issues, can you create a PR for it please ?

[jamespsterling]

Also when you use the datepicker and then click into another field, the date changes ‘magically’.