Error when duplicating a record

[alexarobu]

Hi all 😄

I keep getting an error when trying to duplicate a record from one group to a different group and I have looked everywhere, I can't understand why this happens ☹️ I was wondering if anyone else had this or had any tips on where to look.

This happens in a dockerised GeoNetwork 4.2.5 - basically when I am duplicating a record from one group into another, I get a UI error saying that the id is not found and then the editing screen isn't loading for the new record.

But, in the background, the record is copied and if I go to the target group's records and open the record in editing mode I can edit and save it just fine, so this makes me think it's not a permissions issue (I try to copy it with a full admin user so it should be an editor in all groups).

When I try to duplicate the record in the same group, it works just fine, and the editing screen is loaded as you'd expect, so I can edit the copy straight away, without having to navigate away manually.

This doesn't happen in other deployments, so I think it must be something specific to this deployment, not a general bug (hence asking for help here rather than opening an issue).

I am not quite sure where to look further, so I was hoping that maybe someone has any pointers on what else to try and get to the bottom of this. 🙏 🙏

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you in advance

[josegar74]

I have tested locally with the tag 4.2.5 and can't reproduce the issue.

1. Created 2 groups
2. Created 2 users and assigned the role Editor in both groups
3. Logged with the 1st user, created a metadata in the 1st group and duplicated in the 2on group
4. Logged with the 2st user and duplicated the metadata created by the 1st user in the 2on group

Please check in the GeoNetwork log file if it contains any exceptions that may be useful to check the error. Also check in the database if metadata with the id indicated in the error message as not found exists in the database.

[alexarobu]

Hi @josegar74

Thank you for your reply, I hope you're well! 😃

The way this happens is I have each group mapped to a sub-portal (so a different node) set to show only the records owned by a group, so I have a search filter set to (groupOwner:groupid OR groupPublished:templates) - the templates group is a group that has all the template records for each schema. And if I am in the main /srv node and do the duplication from the editor board, that works just fine, if I go to /node-1 and do the duplication in the group attributed to node-2 is when the issue happens.

Do you think it could be something that throws it off because I am in one of the nodes trying to copy to a different group?

I had nothing in the logs, even with the logs set to DEV 🙈

I checked the database and I can see an entry in the metadata table for the id in the error message.

This is so obscure, thank you so much for helping 🙏 🙏 , I tried everything 🙈 I just can't see what its problem is.

[josegar74]

Can you check the URL when you duplicate the metadata? Are you in the main portal srv or a subportal?

I suspect you are in the subportal of the metadata, and when you duplicate it in the other group, it tries to open the metadata in the subportal of the original metadata, that doesn't have access to the duplicated metadata.

The code to open the editor should always use the srv portal, not the current subportal. Probably that is the problem.

[alexarobu]

@josegar74

You are a WIZARD! 🪄

Indeed, I am trying from a sub-portal, and the URL is /geonetwork/subportal. What you say would explain why it works if I try from the srv node but not from the sub-portals. Do you think then that this is a bug in the actual code?

[josegar74]

@alexarobu I'm not sure if a bug, as depends on the filter of portal.

But I think portals should used only for the search pages, as doesn't make sense for the editor or administration pages. The code that opens the editor or the administration pages could be modified to use the main portal always, to avoid this type of issues.

[alexarobu]

@josegar74 I think for our use case, it makes sense that editors are using the sub-portals to edit their records (so they don't get confused with other records), as these people are from different organisations. But thank you for explaining to me how it works, I can explain the issue to the user who was trying to duplicate records and tell them to do it from the main srv node instead or just ignore the error since the record actually gets duplicated in the background, it's just the editor that's not launching properly. I don't know why in my mind I would have expected it to use the target group/sub-portal to try and launch the editor.