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BUG: 'Ghost Widgets' in JSON crash app after saving with new version (1.15.0)

DanMakridakis

I made 1 change to my app in ExB and then published, and now it has completely erased everything!!!! In edit mode it is now completely blank! Nothing!

In ArcGIS Online Assistant, it appears as though the JSON is still there for the published version. Even though that now loads blank too. ESRI has not exposed the JSON for the draft version so I can't see if it is there anymore, but I suspect it isn't.

PLEASE FIX!!!!!!

BUG UPDATE:

I discovered the BUG causing this issue, which I explain in detail in a reply below. Essentially, "ghost widgets" in the JSON are left behind from previous versions and are not being updated to 1.15.0. These widgets are nowhere to be found in the editor but still appear in the JSON code. Because they are not in the app, they are not updated when you save it. The presence of widgets with older versions makes the JSON unreadable by the newest version of ExB. Use the link below to jump to the longer explanation.

See Reply Below

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Accepted answers

JunshanLiu

@DanMakridakis This issue is fixed. The app is not lost; it just triggers a bug, which causes it to not load. Could you just refresh your app to give it a try?

All comments

TimWestern

One thing I've noticed which isn't always obvious.

When you are doing custom widget work as well, and the config file structure changes. Simply publishing the new one to the client doesn't fix it. I have noticed when developing localhost to our instance (which I think is AGOL and not Enterprise), that the widget and sometimes the app depending on how the widget is first activated, can cause it to error or crash. The only way I've found to fix that is to remove the widget from the app, save it, then re add and reconfigure it. (Take snap shots of any settings before removing though)

I wonder if this behavior is linked to this Ghost Widget behavior.

SerjStol

This was happening to me yesterday as well. Blank screen with Load Config Error after I saved our existing ExB app, luckily I didn't touch our Production version! I tried to remove every single widget to eliminate the issue and just have the blank canvas and the error still persisted!

However, it seems to have been quickly fixed by Esri? All the problematic apps are now working for me...

JunshanLiu

@DanMakridakis This issue is fixed. The app is not lost; it just triggers a bug, which causes it to not load. Could you just refresh your app to give it a try?

DanMakridakis

See my response above with the reason this is happening.

DanMakridakis

@Jianxiaand @Stephanie_F

I discovered the cause, but the solution needs to come from Esri.

Some of the widgets in the JSON are not being updated to version 1.15.0. My projects contain "ghost" widgets from previous versions or templates I've used. These widgets are not found in the Page > Outline or the Pending List but seem to be trapped in the JSON. Because they are only present in the JSON, they are not updated to version 1.15.0 when the app is saved. This causes the Editor and Published versions to be unreadable upon re-opening.

Some of these "ghost" widgets are listed as version 1.9.0, 1.12.0, or 1.13.0 in the JSON. Version 1.15.0 seems to handle widgets listed as version 1.14.0 without issues, but anything older causes it to fail.

For the project I lost, I had published it before closing the editor, which meant the JSON was updated for the published version. I was able to edit the JSON and remove all the ghost widgets from versions 1.9.0, 1.12.0, and 1.13.0. After doing this, the published version started working again.

However, users do not have access to the JSON that the editor sees, so I can't do the same to recover that version. This means I still see a blank screen when I open the Editor. Not only is it blank, but it is also frozen, and I cannot interact with it at all.

I discovered these ghost widgets by duplicating the app I demoed in the above video and then deleting everything from it—widgets, pages, maps, pending list items—and setting all layouts to auto to match. After saving and publishing the app, I checked the JSON for this published version and found about 30 widgets still configured in the code, all with older versions. I know these widgets are from reusing another app or template, because the widgets configurations reference completely different data and maps that have nothing to do with this particular map. I believe this possibly resulted from some BUG that existed in 1.13 and earlier that caused certain widgets to remain in the JSON after they were removed from the app. Maybe if they were a child within a parent widget that was removed (search and widget control inside a map) or if they were referenced by another widget or action. Regardless of the cause, they exist in some of my apps and it is causing this issue in 1.15.0.

HCGIS_asolberg

I have the same issue.

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DanMakridakis

That article says that the update will occur in July. I repeated the steps in both chrome and Edge and both yielded the same results.

But Thank You for the article! We just updated to 11.2 a couple weeks ago and will be on the look out for this issue and the release of the patch.

Shauna-RaeBrown

This morning I heard about an upcoming change to Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge browsers that will likely impact ArcGIS Enterprise versions 11.2 and earlier. Here's a URL that goes into a little more detail (https://cloudpointgeo.com/blog/2024/6/25/an-arcgis-enterprise-users-guide-to-the-impact-of-google-chrome-and-microsoft-edge-127-updates). Anyway, have you tried using a different browser to see if that changes anything?

DanMakridakis

Here's is a video demonstrating an ExB project become blank after saving. What is the contact info for Esri Support so that I reach the correct representative?

JianxiaSong

@DanMakridakis , Thanks for the update. I am not able to reproduce the problem. It would be helpful if you could contact Esri Support for a reproducible case.

DanMakridakis

Update: After more testing I can't find a common link between apps that are going blank and ones that are not. I've been able to make 6 different apps go blank now. But a few other ones are not.

DanMakridakis

Hi Stephanie, It's any existing ExB app that is republished today. I tested it with a few existing disposable scratch apps I already had and the same happened to all of them. I then created a new app and it didn't happen to that one. This is clearly a massive BUG with the update, and not an isolated situation.

Stephanie_F

Hi Dan,

I recommend working with the Technical Support team. They can investigate but will need additional information about the affected application.

-Stephanie

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