V16 Client-side and Server-side Validation Compared To AngularJS Validation In v7 - v13

[crahauiser (Christopher Rahauiser)]

I have reviewed various help topics, documentation, and the source code to try and determine how I can create both client-side and server-side validation for a custom property editor. I built a custom property editor for creating a custom URL in previous versions of Umbraco (v7 to v13) in AngularJS, along with C# for the server-side validation. I am having an issue with determining how to do the same using v16 of Umbraco with Lit and the UUI library. I found the following documentation:
Property Editors - Integrate Validation

I need to submit the value of my property editor (a custom URL), as well as an optional GUID for the current node being edited (which will be null if I’m dealing with a new content item).

It appears in my constructor, I need to get a reference to UmbValidationContext. I then need to wrap my custom URL property editor (which just uses a ) in a tag, and have ${umbBindToValidation(this)} on my along with a #validate method on my custom Lit element. I can then use a modal context to display an error message, along with the inline error.

How do I go about having an async method called to send the custom URL, as well as the entity GUID, to the server? What type of controller do I use in C# on the server-side to accept this data, and do I just use the native fetch method to call the validation, or is there a better way to go about this?

I have the custom URL value, as well as the entity ID, after consuming the UMB_ENTITY_DETAIL_WORKSPACE_CONTEXT and calling .getUnique() on the context (and this.value carries the custom URL from the TextBox). I understand using the Notification Context to display any errors, as well as using the , but I’m also wondering how I can create server-side validation in case my user doesn’t click a “Validate URL” button. I see the documentation at:
Property Editor - Adding Server-Side Validation

I apologize for such a lengthy post. I have been going through the documentation, source code, and help topics such as:
Property Editor: How Do I Use Validation?

This has really been the issue that has prevented me from moving nearly 90+ Umbraco websites to the latest version of Umbraco. I am in talks with my employer to release this Custom URL property editor under an open-source license so anyone can make use of it. I have a Cloudflare caching plugin written in AngularJS that will also be able to take advantage of this knowledge if I’m able to get this working, to clear the cache of a specific page, any listed URLs, or the entire site cache.

I appreciate any and all help with this issue.

[thenexus00 (Liam Dilley)]

We need to expand this topic to the backoffice as a whole.

It is a big task to update out of Angular. 100% but from a few releases of 15 and now we have 16 I do not think the issues outstanding in the backoffice are being made serious enough and I think other stuff needs to be paused and a big focus on this stuff needs to be made.

Umbraco forms with multiple columns do not even fit on screen, you cant put validation reasons into the fields any more due to UI bugs.

On a general level everything is more clunky, the font in areas is incredibly small and for clients we built sites on this is one of the primary things they keep going on about. But there is just A LOT of issues. All the stuff you have mentioned, sidebars simply not loading sometimes and other things simply not working.

I created a big topic as well because just to make Blog grid views for even simple stuff so you can follow a grid users content to some form is now really hard to do, the lack of the Angular magic strings now has limited options, some stuff that you could easily build and not worry about to make good back office experiences are now harder and there is a lot of things like the grid content management that are actually more clunky.
And that is the running theme, Clunky.
Adding a new field to an Umbraco form for that long list you get now for example, everything is Jarring. Your post Chris hints to that even with 9-13 space, its even worse 14-16.

I have wasted hours myself trying to figure things out now.

I fully support the direction and see the goals ahead and it is all for the better but even the documentation is not properly covering things and really lagging behind.
In the last two days alone I have clicked maybe 10 links in the back office to have them 404 regarding version 15 or 16.
Important stuff around the UI and changes to properties are buried and hard to find.
Took me a while to work out this for example:

Setting Types | Umbraco Forms

What you raise is 100% valid and opens the can to all this other stuff and I think it should be a massive concern.
Will all be sorted but I honestly feel with 15 for example, that never should have launched when it did because so much was not usable.

The path forward looks good and you can do more and there is more stuff and it is good BUT Umbraco is loosing site of what and why many love it. Various aspects of it are very easy to get into. The Models concept and how quickly you can create stuff for example is a core love. The back office and how easily it is to build document types to represent content and build solutions has been a key other feature.

Then the ease at which you could do “Something” extra in the backoffice and then go as far as making bigger and more powerful plugins.
Nearly Everything is harder now, takes longer and things like doing simple grid block view rendering has to have time spent away from actually building sites and online applications.
I spent way to much time doing a workflow for the current Umbraco Forms and Umbraco 16. The reason I had to build my own because even the official one from Umbraco does not actually work.

Everything is getting too complicated, too hard and cumbersome and too buggy.
Umbraco really needs to take this to heart and make a note on this and take a solid look internally and remember its core and its own heart and spend some time fixing, polishing and bring back some of its core fundamentals.

I wonder what the stats are on versions. How many things are not version 8. How many 13’s are there compared to 14 or 15.

I have faith but Umbraco needs to take some steps back and some time to get things back on track.