There are a lot of people on this site reporting problems with an ajax error message box when attempting to add fields, modify settings etc when editing a view. Most solutions given involve turning off ajax/javascript editing in /admin/build/views/tools but this is an unsatifactory solution. I have solved this problem for me but this involves changes to drupal core files. The basic reason is that drupal_to_js does not produce valid json. The ajax callback then fails and the message box is shown. Read on...

Program flow:
I have a field in a view. I click it to modify it, and a jquery mod catches the click and the code in views/js/ajax.js runs. The ajax code at line 247 in ajax.js changes the URL from xxx/nojs/xxx to xxx/ajax/xxx, adds the "throbber" and some other CSS stuff, and runs an ajax call to xxx/ajax/xxx.

The code in views/includes/admin.inc is then called. This generates the HTML to modify the views page. This is then passed to views_ajax_render in views/includes/ajax.inc to render into json and send to the browser. This in turn is done by drupal_json() which itself sets the header and runs drupal_to_js in /includes/common.inc. Still with me?

The problem is that drupal_to_js does not produce valid json. The JSON specification is detailed at http://www.json.org/. There is a json validator at http://www.jsonlint.com/ which fails the json returned by drupal_to_js. The two main problems are as follows:

  1. The first is that drupal_to_js "use(s) HTML-safe strings, i.e. with <, > and & escaped." (common.inc line 2434). This means that < is replaced by \x3c, > by \x3e and & by \x26. However these strings (\xnn) are invalid json. The only valid hex code (see json.org) is \unnnn. So < should be replaced with \u003c, > by \u003e and & by \u0026. If common.inc is modified in this way (line 2445, 2446), the json is valid and the ajax call works without error
  2. The second problem is with apostrophies. For example, the text "User's Picture" or "Target of the link, such as _blank, _parent or an iframe's name." Json does not delimit apostrophies, but the json returned to the browser is in this format: "Target of the link, such as _blank, _parent or an iframe\'s name." - note the apostrophy in "iframe\'s". From json.org, the only legal delimited characters are \" \\ \/ \b \f \n \r \t \u four-hex-digits --- so not \' -- again such json fails the validator.

In summary, to fix all these problems, the following changes need to be made:
- fix drupal_to_js() to return valid json (or create a new function) where hex strings are \unnnn not \xnn
- fix drupal_to_js() or similar to remove the slashes added by addslashes, basically "undelimit" \' to '

I have modified drupal_to_js() in common.inc as follows and the errors go away completely

common.inc line 2444-2447
    case 'string':
      return '"'. str_replace(array("\r", "\n", "<", ">", "&"),
                              array('\r', '\n', '\u003c', '\u003e', '\u0026'),
                              str_replace("\'","'", addslashes($var))) .'"';

Clearly this is just a short-term fix but it does prove my point. I think that I will copy the code from drupal_json and drupal_to_js into view's ajax.inc, make the mods as above then run my own _views_drupal_json and _views_drupal_to_js within views.

Please email if this is not clear...

CommentFileSizeAuthor
#20 error.txt72.62 KBwalidvb
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Comments

quicksketch’s picture

quicksketch
he/him
CreditAttribution: quicksketch commented

Earl pointed this one out to me and I wanted to add what I could find on this issue.

- First, the encoding problems are already fixed in Drupal 7, see drupal_json_encode(). Which just adds further validity to the fact that we're currently doing something wrong.
- Pressflow suffers from this same problem, which may be the cause for this issue in the FileField Sources queue #696778: Problems with Pressflow install.
- I'm not sure anyone knows about the apostrophe problem, great find.

All in all, this is excellent sleuthing and very appreciated. I'd do anything to reduce the number of problems people have with AJAX uploading in FileField. We should find a permanent solution and move to get this fixed in core.

piersg’s picture

piersg CreditAttribution: piersg commented

Looking around, I've found a few other Issues dealing with this. One is #479368: D7: Create RFC compliant HTML safe JSON, although that topic's authors' solution looks a little over-engineered. I suppose that as this is a core issue it may be good to push ahead with trying to get their patch into core asap. It's been in the test queue for six weeks waiting to be checked. In the meantime, I'm pleased to have my ajax functionality back within the Views UI!

mobcdi’s picture

mobcdi CreditAttribution: mobcdi commented

Is it safe to make the changes to common.inc or is there a tested patch available for this?
I'm running d6.14 and Views 6.x-2.7

andyxmas’s picture

andyxmas CreditAttribution: andyxmas commented

worked a treat for me. thanks!

CinemaSaville’s picture

CinemaSaville CreditAttribution: CinemaSaville commented

Your code did not fix my problem, however Views 6.x-3 Alpha did. However there were other problems in there so I had to go back to Views 2, the weird thing is when I went back the problem was still gone. Man, what a mystery these things are. Just glad it's gone.

David Strauss’s picture

David Strauss
he/him
CreditAttribution: David Strauss commented

While a release isn't out yet, I have committed the fix to the JSON encoder in Pressflow.

sunchaser’s picture

sunchaser CreditAttribution: sunchaser commented

solution sounded good , but didnt work for me either
6.x-2.10

jimshreds’s picture

jimshreds CreditAttribution: jimshreds commented

change to common.inc not working here 6.x-2.10

nicanorflavier’s picture

nicanorflavier CreditAttribution: nicanorflavier commented

Didn't work for me either.

spudette77’s picture

spudette77 CreditAttribution: spudette77 commented

Unfortunately did nothing for me either. Does anyone have any new ideas?

WAKeaney’s picture

WAKeaney CreditAttribution: WAKeaney commented

http://drupal.org/node/849008#comment-3234982
I found that disabling SSL alleviated this problem. seutje on IRC pointed out that the async call is probably being made over http, which is considered crossdomain by javascript. Setting my base_url to specify https:// for the whole site did the trick perfectly, without modifying one line of code.
$base_url = ((isset($_SERVER['HTTPS']) && $_SERVER['HTTPS']=='on') ? 'https://' : 'http://') . 'mysite.com';

SleekSlimby’s picture

SleekSlimby CreditAttribution: SleekSlimby commented

Disabling "jquery-1.4.2.min.js" worked for me and people have confirmed that the latest jquery is not compatible with Views: http://drupal.org/node/768612

I rolled back to "jquery-1.4.1.min.js" and it worked for a while. It is working again now but I will have to confirm that the problem does not come back.

norm1710’s picture

norm1710 CreditAttribution: norm1710 commented

Can confirm that #13 worked for me but the other solutions didn't

kurt-s’s picture

kurt-s CreditAttribution: kurt-s commented

Perfect, The solution provided by the author of the article worked for me. I would point out however that the fix is on line's 2498 through 2501 in my editor.

shunting’s picture

shunting CreditAttribution: shunting commented

The change to common.inc did not work for me.

However, the change to views/includes/admin.inc, line 1559 did work:

http://mmbee888.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/drupal-views-module-ajax-error/

PHP 5.3.2, json 1.2.1, views-6.x-2.6, drupal-6.14.

HydroZ’s picture

HydroZ CreditAttribution: HydroZ commented
Issue tags: +jquery views fupload add another item form json

Thanks for the fix, Pirsg!
This solved 3 issues, that are very often discussed:
- "Add another item", when trying to upload a file via cck-field
- FUpload, multi-file upload, showed me the progress bar but kept hanging with the message "Images in que are processed",
- and the above mentioned one: "An error occured" when using the Views UI.

From my site i can definitly determine, that the jQuery-Version is not reltaed to this issues. Tried with jQuery 1.2.2 (Drupal standard), 1.4.1,1.4.2,1.4.4.

blitux’s picture

blitux CreditAttribution: blitux commented

Works for me. Drupal 6.20, jquery 1.4.3

walidvb’s picture

walidvb CreditAttribution: walidvb commented

I made the change to common.inc as mentionned above, and the error disappeared. However, when I try to save a change i made(add a field/change view name/etc..) i get a page with 

{ "display": "\u003cform action=\"/Absolutive/admin/build/views/ajax/add-item/Links/default/field\"  accept-charset=\"UTF-8\" method=\"post\" id=\"views-ui-config-item-form\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"form-item\" id=\"edit-options-exclude-wrapper\"\u003e\n \u003clabel class=\"option\" for=\"edit-options-exclude\"\u003e\u003cinput type=\"checkbox\" name=\"options[exclude]\" id=\"edit-options-exclude\" value=\"1\"   class=\"form-checkbox\" /\u003e Exclude from display\u003c/label\u003e\n \u003cdiv class=\"description\"\u003eCheck this box to not display this field, but still load it in the view.  Use this option to not show a grouping field in each record, or when doing advanced theming.\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv ......

(full error in attachment)

so i'm guessing JSON now accepts the characters, but they're not the right ones to be used...

I also tried this: http://mmbee888.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/drupal-views-module-ajax-error/ , but this doesn't help either...

Views used to work, but not anymore.. anybody can help me on this?

thanks a lot.

walidvb’s picture

walidvb CreditAttribution: walidvb commented
FileSize
error.txt72.62 KB

really sorry, forgot the attachment :/

T1ckL35’s picture

T1ckL35 CreditAttribution: T1ckL35 commented
Version: 6.x-2.8 » 6.x-2.11

For reference when I got this problem:
I got the error (or a variation of it) when I manually upgraded from jquery 1.2.6 to 1.3.2. I backed up the files in the jquery_update/replace folder and then copied in the 1.3.2 versions. When I did this the error started and stopped me working with views.
I found that in the jquery_update admin settings it was set to use the 'packed' version. I had added a manually packed js version and the official js minified version but the packed one was dodgy/corrupt and was breaking views that relies on it. I did a switch to the minified one and the problem disappeared

adam_b’s picture

adam_b CreditAttribution: adam_b commented

subscribing - I got this when I copied an online site into a local WAMP environment.

claar’s picture

claar CreditAttribution: claar commented

sub'ing -- same problem

decostar’s picture

decostar CreditAttribution: decostar commented

Worked for me when I turned off Javascript for Views in Tools.

shunting’s picture

shunting CreditAttribution: shunting commented

I encountered a similar error from apache's mod_security. Perhaps the server thought that "view" and "record" were part of a SQL injection? (mod_security's pattern recognition in cPanel seems to be just awful....)

mwalker_drupal’s picture

mwalker_drupal CreditAttribution: mwalker_drupal commented

using Drupal 6.20 and getting the css dump mentioned above when adding or modifying views settings. Noticed this issue after upgrading JQuery to the latest.

Fixed it by disabling javascript in Views UI.

Thanks decostar for the tip.

erald’s picture

erald CreditAttribution: erald commented

Drupal 6.22 and views 6x.2.12 the common.inc change worked for me.

eric constantinides’s picture

eric constantinides CreditAttribution: eric constantinides commented

Ahhh, thank you so much!!! Fixed it for me in Drupal 6.22. It's line 2500 in that version btw. Thanks again.!

el_reverend’s picture

el_reverend CreditAttribution: el_reverend commented

Not sure if that has something to do with it, but once I log out and back in the error no longer appears. What, if anything could that have to do with the login?

In my case the error reports 

An error occurred at [Site Name]/admin/views/ajax/config_item/[Name of View]/block_1/sort/timestamp'  - Error Description: 0:

Not sure if I wan to change the common.inc file since this is yet another piece to keep track of when the next update comes around. How safe would this be?

donquixote’s picture

donquixote CreditAttribution: donquixote commented

The correct D6 issue is
#1086098: D6 JSON is total garbage - Create RFC 4627 compliant HTML safe JSON

rajeesh’s picture

rajeesh CreditAttribution: rajeesh commented

Dear piersg , your changes in common.inc fixed my issues. But now I need to create a patch for applying those changes. Can you please guide me to create patch for the changes.
Thanks in advance.

klonos’s picture

klonos
he/him
Primary language English
Location 90% Melbourne, Australia - 10% Larissa, Greece
CreditAttribution: klonos commented

@rajeesh: Hey Rajeesh, Creating a patch with Git is what you're after ;)

rajeesh’s picture

rajeesh CreditAttribution: rajeesh commented

I created a patch for it. But it was not working. I don't know what's wrong with it. Here is my patch.

--- includes/common.inc	
+++ includes/common.inc	
@@ -2445,4 +2445,4 @@
 case 'double':
      return $var;
    case 'resource':
-    case 'string':
-      return '"'. str_replace(array("\r", "\n", "<", ">", "&"),
-                              array('\r', '\n', '\x3c', '\x3e', '\x26'),
-                              addslashes($var)) .'"';
+    case 'string':
+      return '"'. str_replace(array("\r", "\n", "<", ">", "&"),
+                              array('\r', '\n', '\u003c', '\u003e', '\u0026'),
+                              str_replace("\'","'", addslashes($var))) .'"';
 case 'array':
      // Arrays in JSON can't be associative. If the array is empty or if it
klonos’s picture

klonos
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Primary language English
Location 90% Melbourne, Australia - 10% Larissa, Greece
CreditAttribution: klonos commented

From taking a look in other .patch files, it seems that the patch should have a header in the form of:

diff --git a/includes/common.inc b/includes/common.inc
index 177d92b..243fc39 100644
--- a/includes/common.inc
+++ b/includes/common.inc

Are you sure you used the right command parameters?

MustangGB’s picture

MustangGB CreditAttribution: MustangGB commented
Issue summary: View changes
Status: Active » Closed (won't fix)