topic Re: ExB App Completely Wiped After June 24 Update, GONE!!!! in ArcGIS Experience Builder Questions

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

DanMakridakis — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 22:42:52 GMT

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

Re: ExB App Completely Wiped After June 24 Update, GONE!!!!

Stephanie_F — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 18:13:24 GMT

Hi Dan,

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

-Stephanie

Re: ExB App Completely Wiped After June 24 Update, GONE!!!!

DanMakridakis — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 18:17:18 GMT

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.

Re: ExB App Completely Wiped After June 24 Update, GONE!!!!

DanMakridakis — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 18:43:55 GMT

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.

Re: ExB App Completely Wiped After June 24 Update, GONE!!!!

Jianxia — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 19:04:02 GMT

@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.

Re: ExB App Completely Wiped After June 24 Update, GONE!!!!

DanMakridakis — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 19:49:00 GMT

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?

(view in My Videos)

Re: ExB App Completely Wiped After June 24 Update, GONE!!!!

Shauna-RaeBrown — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 19:35:59 GMT

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?

Re: ExB App Completely Wiped After June 24 Update, GONE!!!!

DanMakridakis — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 19:42:24 GMT

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.

Re: ExB App Completely Wiped After June 24 Update, GONE!!!!

HCGIS_asolberg — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 19:56:08 GMT

I have the same issue.

Re: ExB App Completely Wiped After June 24 Update, GONE!!!!

DanMakridakis — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 23:42:12 GMT

@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.

Re: ExB App Completely Wiped After June 24 Update, GONE!!!!

DanMakridakis — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 22:15:39 GMT

See my response above with the reason this is happening.

Re: ExB App Completely Wiped After June 24 Update, GONE!!!!

Jianxia — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 23:34:59 GMT

@DanMakridakis , thanks for sharing. This definitely helps us narrow down the issue. Greatly appreciated!

Re: ExB App Completely Wiped After June 24 Update, GONE!!!!

Junshan_Liu — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 00:46:47 GMT

“Some of the widgets in the JSON are not being updated to version 1.15.0.”

This is normal in an ExB app, here are the details about the version: When a widget is added to an app, the current widget version will be saved in the config. When a new ExB version is released, when you open the app in the new release, the opened widgets will be upgraded to the new version in memory. However, for widgets that are not opened, the version is still the old one. There are some cases that widgets are not opened, such as the page is not loaded, the widgets added in the mobile, etc.

We can't reproduce this issue, could you share an app to help us identify the bug?

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

Junshan_Liu — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 05:12:09 GMT

@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?

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

SerjStol — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 09:06:15 GMT

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...

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

TimWestern — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 12:53:37 GMT

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.

Re: ExB App Completely Wiped After June 24 Update, GONE!!!!

DanMakridakis — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 18:43:37 GMT

@Junshan_Liu Thanks for addressing this and getting it fixed in a timely manner. I was out on Friday, so I'm just getting back to it this morning. It seems to be working again.

I'm wondering if this issue has revealed another underlying bug. In this instance, the widgets causing my issues no longer exist anywhere in the app and therefore could never be opened to be updated. I completely removed everything from the app, but these widgets remained in the JSON. The only place I can see some of them referenced is within the 'Action' list.

For example, after removing everything from my app, if I add a single map widget back and then go to Action > Record Selection, a number of widgets are listed that are nowhere to be found in the app. See the attached pictures. These are the widgets that caused my issues. They are present in the JSON but cannot be deleted in the app or opened to trigger an update to the newest version.

Re: ExB App Completely Wiped After June 24 Update, GONE!!!!

Junshan_Liu — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 01:04:27 GMT

@DanMakridakis Thanks for your feedback! We have found some widgets may not be used by left in the config, but we don't know the reproducible steps to reproduce this issue, so this issue has not been fixed. We'll try to figure out a way to clean these stale widgets. It's great if you can help provide steps that can create this kind of app!

Re: ExB App Completely Wiped After June 24 Update, GONE!!!!

DanMakridakis — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 18:33:03 GMT

I've tested various methods to replicate the issue but have been unsuccessful. I wonder if the problem causing stale widgets has resolved itself. Many of my existing apps with stale widgets were built using custom templates that already contained these stale widgets, causing them to be carried over time. Unfortunately, I no longer have the original apps from which I created those templates to reverse-engineer the process.

I've noticed that some stale widgets are referenced by the actions of other stale widgets, such as a search widget with an action linked to a stale map. Some widgets may have been embedded within another widget or sidebar when removed, like a sidebar containing a map with a widget controller and search widget (child within a parent). However, all my tests to recreate these sequences, such as setting up parent and child widgets, connecting actions, then removing them, have been unsuccessful. I've tried various combinations of adding, removing, embedding, sending to pending, connecting actions, saving, publishing, creating templates, and republishing. I've even experimented with different device sizes, where one size would have the widget in pending and the other not, then deleting them or switching back to auto. Still, no luck.

In older versions, could you remove a widget directly from the pending list via an ellipsis menu? I was wondering if this used to be possible and caused child widgets to remain when the parent was removed?

Additionally, was the message below always present? If not, are these stale widgets legacy items from before the message was added, resulting from some sequence of removing widgets from one device and not another, or switching from custom to auto, causing them not to be properly removed from the code?

There was also a custom print service referencing a stale print widget, which referenced a stale map with stale widget controllers and search widgets also linked to it. Again, I was unable to reproduce any sequence to create these stale widgets in the context of the print service.

It's also challenging to troubleshoot without access to the draft JSON to compare and see if there are any other clues to what is happening.

Could the sequence require a version update in the middle of the process, making it not replicable while in the same version?

Nonetheless, that's the extent of my time for troubleshooting this. Sorry I couldn't help further.

Re: ExB App Completely Wiped After June 24 Update, GONE!!!!

Junshan_Liu — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 01:07:46 GMT

@DanMakridakis Thanks so much for putting so much effort into this issue!

For the delete widget warning window, it is not always present. It'll be displayed when we delete a widget that are referenced by multiple devices.

Maybe this issue has been fixed as you said, the stale widgets are in the templates or old apps only. We'll clean the default templates in future releases.