What should happen with custom validation on Media Type properties?

[marcemarc]

This came up recently in a consultancy call, as Umbraco 13 was throwing an error when setting custom validation on a Media Type property whereas in V8, a validation message was displayed - in both cases the Media item was saved, but it led to the question of what was the point of being able to specify a regex to validate Media Type properties to a particular pattern - when they don't prevent anything from happening, if the provided text is invalid.

When you apply a custom validation restriction to a Content Item, then it is the 'Umbraco way' to allow you to save the content item with the validation error, but not publish, if the field is 'mandatory' then it does need to be filled in to enable it to be saved.

But with Media Types there is no concept of a 'published state'... as soon as the Media item is saved it is available on the front end of the website along with any change to associated Media Type properties, whether they are valid or not, according to the custom validation rules.

In the conversation, the aim was, to prevent a hyphen from being entered into a description of the Media Item, as this was breaking their search implementation, and the advice was to use the MediaService Saving notification to handle the enforcement of the rule.

However, it made me wonder why we had the UI for the Custom validation at all for Media Types...

Would it be more expected that for Media Types, where there is no publish state, that the custom validation prevents saving? or does that create an inconsistent editorial experience with the way content works? or should we just not have the 'custom validation' for Media Types as it doesn't really do anything, but leads people to believe that it might be enforcing something? in 13 a red banner would be shown, but in 15.1.1 nothing is shown the Media is just saved...

genuinely didn't know what should happen :-P

[AndyButland]

Oddly enough we were discussing this the other day at HQ, as part of the resolution of #17932 via #17961. We did wonder if it would be better to just fail the save here.

We left as is though mainly due to the challenge of the "drag/drop" behaviour. It could be that editors have a workflow where they drag and import a number of media files in one go, so the media is created, and then they go through and add the mandatory alt text or other properties. If we prevented save on validation, then they would no longer be able to do that.

[marcemarc]

Thanks @AndyButland yes, the consultancy, sparked the creation of the bug report, and the puzzle.

So at the moment if you add a custom field to a Media Type, and make it 'mandatory' - but don't specify any custom validation

Then if you 'create' that media item via the menus, you can't save the image until you supply a value to the mandatory field.

Which is what you'd expect...

but if you drag the file into a Media Section or via a picker.

it does save it and leaves the mandatory field blank...

There is nothing to prompt the editor to 'go through and add the mandatory alt text or other properties;' the journey is complete - the rule of mandatoryness cannot be enforced...

'Custom Validation' - could therefore work in the same way, prevent the save when the media item is created via the menu, but ignored when dragged and dropped... this would then be consistent... but consistently flawed in the same way :-P

Probably what might be expected, if a Mandatory field is applied to Media Type, or a custom validation rule, and twenty images are uploaded via drag and drop, then, people might expect the editor to be prompted, perhaps via a further overlay, or an alert to 'remember to populate the mandatory things' - short of introducing some kind of 'published/usable' state for Media it's always going to be a bit of an anomaly!

or

we just ditch mandatory and custom validation on Media Types... because it's a bit of an edge case and has never really been possible to enforce? The confusion coming from having the Option on a Media Type to add a Custom Validation rule which isn't then helping as people might expect??

or

nothing to see here, it's just such a non issue that it doesn't matter that it's weird :-P - but it intrigued me what the thinking was.