error updating settings

Hi oakhillman,

I’m sorry you’ve run into issues with Document Gallery. Can you clarify a few details about the problems you’re having? With more information I’ll have a better chance of narrowing down what might be creating this issue.

1. Were the error messages you describe showing up prior to the update to WP version 3.9.1?

2. What was the WP version you were running prior to the update?

3. After uninstalling DG and reinstalling, does the issue reappear if you try to edit the settings again?

4. Do those error messages all appear on the same page? Is it on the admin side or where you use the shortcode (the frontend)?

-Dan

Dan,

Here are the responses to your queries.

1. Not that I’m aware of.

2. Best I can say is 3.8.x.

3. As I mentioned, this is what I did and yes, the issue persists. But just to be sure I just uninstalled and reinstalled it, and again, the issue persists.

4. All on the same page, and the page contains just the error messages, the rest of the page is blank. It occurs when I click on the “Save Changes” button in the back-end of course.

– Mark

Thanks for the additional information!

I’m looking into the issue now, but there’s one more piece of information that would be useful. It’s a bit challenging to get and requires you to access the DB directly, but if you can do it then it will increase the odds that I can isolate what is happening.

What you need to do is run the following against your WP database:
SELECT option_value FROM wp_options WHERE option_name = 'document_gallery'
(Note that “wp_options” could have a prefix other than “wp_” depending on your config settings.)

Not knowing what your setup looks like, unfortunately I can’t be very specific in terms of exactly how you should go about running this, but if you have specific questions I’ll be happy to help in any way I can.

Thanks!
-Dan

PS: If you’ve found this plugin useful, please take a moment to rate it. Thanks! ??

Here’s the value in the field for your record.

a:3:{s:7:”gallery”;a:1:{s:8:”defaults”;a:9:{s:5:”order”;s:3:”ASC”;s:7:”orderby”;s:6:”author”;s:8:”relation”;s:3:”AND”;s:13:”attachment_pg”;b:0;s:12:”descriptions”;b:0;s:5:”fancy”;b:0;s:3:”ids”;b:0;s:6:”images”;b:0;s:9:”localpost”;b:0;}}s:7:”version”;s:3:”2.1″;s:3:”css”;a:2:{s:13:”last-modified”;s:25:”Fri, 18 Jul 2014 19:46:19″;s:4:”etag”;s:32:”3795ddb780ec01beb644a144c3c0b119″;}}

Thanks oakhillman,

That’s very helpful. I’ll be looking into this.

-Dan

Dan,
Any progress on resolving this issue?
– Mark

Hi Mark,

Yes, I’m very sorry for the delay. “Real” work has been quite hectic the past few weeks and I’ve had limited time to keep up with DG issues.

This one actually has me stumped. The obvious issue is that a segment of the options (which you reported above) is missing. This segment is necessary for the plugin to function and is the reason things are breaking. What is not clear is *why* it’s missing. Since uninstalling and reinstalling doesn’t resolve the issue doesn’t fix the problem, that means that the issue is not a one-off quirk, but something that is recreated over and over again.

My plan is to insert a safe guard against poorly foormed options being saved and adding extra logging along with this so that we can figure out where the bad option value is coming from. I’m hoping this will be relatively straightforward, but it may be a week or so before I can get it together.

Again, I am very sorry for the delay. I know it is quite inconvenient.

-Dan

Oh gosh, no problem Dan. I was just checking. The site owner doesn’t even know there’s a problem because they would never update any settings without my help.

Are you able to duplicate the issue on your end? If you want, I can install a site for testing. I have extra domains and unlimited hosting with GoDaddy.

– Mark

Hi Mark,

We are not able to reliably reproduce over here so if you could setup an environment that reproduces the issue that would be extremely helpful!

If you want to continue this conversation via email, the best way to start that would be through my site (https://dan.rossiters.org/contact-me/). (Don’t like posting my email on a public forum.)

Thanks so much for your willingness to help in narrowing down the origin of this issue!

-Dan

Hi Mark,

We’ve just released version 2.2 which includes some new features designed to prevent saving invalid options like what you were experiencing.

After installing the new version, if you navigate to Dashboard -> Settings -> Document Gallery -> Advanced tab and check the validate options checkbox your system will no longer be able to save an invalid option structure. Please let me know if this helps at all with the issues you’ve been experiencing.

-Dan