topic Re: 999 ODK Validate Error - Picky about characters in ArcGIS Survey123 Questions

999 ODK Validate Error - Picky about characters

TammySikma1 — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 22:43:54 GMT

A member of our organization is setting up her first Survey123 and it's looking great. It saved fine, but when she went to Preview, she got a long ODK Validate Error message. It turns out that there was an issue in the survey with two radio button questions that each contained rules. If the responses or subsequent question titles contained specific characters, the 999: ODK Validate Error was returned. The characters included a comma (,), exclamation mark (!) and apostrophes (').

As soon as "I'm" or "don't" was replaced with "I am" or "do not" and sentences were changed to use periods, the survey Previewed successfully.

These seem like characters that should be acceptable, and they are elsewhere in questions without rules. I couldn't find any documentation about similar problems. Is this a known problem?

Start to an error that returned when a question with a rule directed the response, "I don't know" to a follow-up statement who's title read, "No worries, that's what we're here for!" below:

{"error":{"name":"ArcGISRequestError","message":"999: ODK Validate Errors:\n>> XForm is invalid. See above for the errors.\norg.javarosa.xform.parse.XFormParseException: Encountered a problem with display condition for node [${no_worries_that_is_what_we_are_}] at line: ${what_is_an_official_plan_} ='I_don't_know', Couldn't understand the expression starting at this point: ..._plan_ ='I_don'͎t_know'\n\nResult: Invalid","originalMessage":"ODK Validate Errors:\n>> XForm is invalid. See above for the errors.\norg.javarosa.xform.parse.XFormParseException: Encountered a problem with display condition for node [${no_worries_that_is_what_we_are_}] at line: ${what_is_an_official_plan_} ='I_don't_know', Couldn't understand the expression starting at this point: ..._plan_ ='I_don'͎t_know'\n\nResult: Invalid","code":999,"response":{"error":{"message":"ODK Validate Errors:\n>> XForm is invalid. See above for the errors.\norg.javarosa.xform.parse.XFormParseException: Encountered a problem with display condition for node [${no_worries_that_is_what_we_are_}] at line: ${what_is_an_official_plan_} ='I_don't_know', Couldn't understand the expression starting at this point: ..._plan_ ='I_don'͎t_know'\n\nResult: Invalid","code":999,"details":[]},"success":false},"url":"

Re: 999 ODK Validate Error - Picky about characters

DougBrowning — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 16:05:28 GMT

You did not list what data type you are using. I tried note and select one and they worked.

Are you making sure the outer quotes are diff than in the string?

'I don't know' will not work but "I don't know" does work. Same '"Hello"' is ok but not ""Hello""

You can use ' in a label for select one and I got it to work in name even. I also got , to work in label and name but name not a great idea.

Hope that helps

Re: 999 ODK Validate Error - Picky about characters

TammySikma1 — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 13:03:35 GMT

Hi Doug,

Thanks for the quick reply. In both examples, the questions were a Single Choice radio button type using Set Rule to direct the respondent to either a Single Line Text response (1st example) or a Note that they could read (2nd example).

We were able to change the Schema so the offending characters weren't a problem and keep the questions as desired successfully.

Re: 999 ODK Validate Error - Picky about characters

Jennifer_Parmeley — Tue, 01 Aug 2023 20:06:40 GMT

This is still an issue 2 years later. Thanks for posting this @TammySikma1
This a long and error!

One of my survey options was "don't know" as soon I removed the apostrophe I was able to publish my survey

Re: 999 ODK Validate Error - Picky about characters

oballard-laliberte_mrcerable — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 15:53:38 GMT

And still an issue... Not being able to use apostrophes is a big problem in French!