Failures to update a field are not properly handed in SQL Storage and Field UI

@droplet: There is a try/catch block.. what am I missing?

function field_create_field($field) {
  // ...
  // Store the field and get the id back.
  drupal_write_record('field_config', $record);
  $field['id'] = $record['id'];

  // Invoke hook_field_storage_create_field after the field is
  // complete (e.g. it has its id).
  try {
    // Invoke hook_field_storage_create_field after
    // drupal_write_record() sets the field id.
    module_invoke($storage_type['module'], 'field_storage_create_field', $field);
  }
  catch (Exception $e) {
    // If storage creation failed, remove the field_config record before
    // rethrowing the exception.
    db_delete('field_config')
      ->condition('id', $field['id'])
      ->execute();
    throw $e;
  }

This definitely works for me.

By any chance, would you have xdebug with weird configuration options enabled?

Ok, there are a couple of issues here:

• The core issue is that the Field SQL Storage doesn't handle failure to update a field schema properly: it first drops the tables, then try to recreate them with the new schema and doesn't properly rollback when something fails
• The Field UI was incorrectly trying to catch FieldException instead of a general exception in a couple of places, and was calling field_update_field() without catching the possible exceptions in one place

Actually, this needs to go in 8.x first.

+++ b/modules/field_ui/field_ui.admin.incundefined
@@ -1650,7 +1648,7 @@ function field_ui_widget_type_form_submit($form, &$form_state) {
     field_update_instance($instance);
     drupal_set_message(t('Changed the widget for field %label.', array('%label' => $instance['label'])));
   }
-  catch (FieldException $e) {
+  catch (Exception $e) {
     drupal_set_message(t('There was a problem changing the widget for field %label.', array('%label' => $instance['label'])));

That's weird. If you are updating an instance, why would the patch change that? And while at it, why is that message not 'error' ??

That's weird. If you are updating an instance, why would the patch change that? And while at it, why is that message not 'error' ??

PDOException can currently be triggered by field_sql_storage_field_storage_update_field() (see #4 for the summary). Either we catch them or we re-wrap them into a FieldException, but we need to do something.

The message is not error, but it is not touched by this patch.

While #8 is bogus, for consistency reasons I can accept this. Please file a followup for the missing 'error' thanks!

Looks like this needs backporting to D7 as well.

Committed and pushed to 8.x and 7.x. Thanks!