409 Error when attempting to edit Profile Highlight Color

If you attempt to edit the Highlight Color on your Profile, you get an error: Web error: 409 (Conflict) on PATCH of <https://khoward5.dev.inrupt.net/profile/card>

To Replicate

1. Log into a dev.inrupt.net Pod.
2. “Edit your profile”.
3. Edit the Highlight Color.

Expected Behaviour

1. The Highlight color is updated to the selected color.

Actual Behaviour

1. Error Web error: 409 (Conflict) on PATCH of <https://khoward5.dev.inrupt.net/profile/card> is displayed.

[timbl]

The bug is in the logic of handling of the logic of a field in the form system. Why would it be there? The line may have been put there in the past when the system used PUT to save back the edited data. In that case, one can imagine it working so that is the data was save, that all values with defaults would be set to those defaults. (Which may or nor have been a good idea!). But in fact the code (now) uses PATCH and sends the diffs using update(), and when you do that it is important that the local quad store is in sync with the web.

[timbl]

I would suggest that the “change color” (and other edit) routines should simply check whether there’s a stored value for the field before it tries to delete it, try to delete the stored value if present, and then write the new color value (which will then succeed, whether or not there was a previously stored value).

That’s basically what the form fields do. They first read the file, and set the UI to the set value if there is one, or otherwise the default in the form, if any. If the user sets anything, then the update function deleted the existing to be deleted statements (ds) before it adds in the new ones (is). ((The tristate checkbox is more complicated in that user can opt for saying true or false or not saying anything.))