BUG: [When changing template node types, existing nodes are not updated ]

[jdanish]

Create nodes with type "one". Create a "one" node. In template editor, change the "one" type to be "two". The network still lists all nodes as type "one."

The expectation would be that one would convert to two, or else it is a massive hassle.

[benloh]

@jdanish This requires a much more robust system.

Right now node types are fairly dumb: it’s just a text label associated with a color. The type data is blindly stored in the node record, with no validation or migration, but gracefully falls back if a type is not found.

The robust solution would be:

• We have to define an id field for each node type
• Introduce a way to define a “permanent” id for the field and hide that in the template UI, autogenerating an id if necessary, but possibly sometimes exposing it if changes need to be made
• Gracefully fall back if ids are in conflict or missing
• Reload and update and handle network updates

Or a hacky solution would be:

• When the node type label is changed, open all projects and do a search and replace on that label across the network for all open browsers

This kind of ups the ante from a simple flexible function to a full blown system and starts to introduce migration issues. I’d love to build that, but I think it’s more than we should tackle at this point.

If this is absolutely critical to have, we can consider the hacky solution, but I’d rather not introduce more technical debt.

[jdanish]

Got it, thanks. I now recall we might have discussed this before. I guess I assumed there was an easy way to basically filter the nodes by type and return the set, thus making it easy to change their type in bulk. But, clearly not!

Given the challenges and the timing, can we instead put a warning message (inline is fine) That says that any existing nodes will need to be changed by hand so there is no surprise / fear of an error? The message would ideally appear on-edit but worst case it can just be on top of the type section and say "Warning: if you change these, any existing nodes will need to be changed by hand" or something like that?