Overwriting Fields

API Q&A
#1

Does anyone have a way for a form when submitted honour empty fields and delete the current values from IS?
I’m running a campaign asking people to update their details (including address) in exchange for a free gift and not all addresses have all address lines.

For example if I currently have the address
Flat 1, 123 Sample Street, Sample Suburb, Sample City, 9999
and I update that to
1/123 Sample Street, Sample Suburb, Sample City, 9999
IS will now show the obviously incorrect
1/123 123 Sample Street, 123 Sample Street, Sample Suburb, Sample City, 9999

Same happens when uploading via CSV.
I’ve had to manually mark the incorrect records in Excel, apply and tag then bulk update the field that should be empty via search… That’s not saving time really is it…

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#2

@Josh_Lindsay, honestly, I’ve never seen this happen to anyone in years of api development and IS services. When a field is over written it’s just over written. Since this is not the case for you I would say that you would need a support ticket as yours is the first case I’ve ever heard of.

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#3

Hi John,

Thanks for your reply.

I think it’s because we’re not sending a value through so rather than treat it as an empty field it’s deciding to keep what’s there already. Seems more like a feature than a bug unfortunately.

I’ve tried to submit a space but the form processor in campaign builder strips that out.

My workaround is a JavaScript code that adds the word empty to the form after submitted which I’ll then need to search for and replace. Not ideal really.

Cheers,
Josh Lindsay

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#4

Hi @Josh_Lindsay,

Interesting. Have you tried submitting a non printable character? Say chr(8) (the tab character)?

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#5

Great idea @John_Borelli.

I updated my Javascript to append &nbsp and I’m now getting a space rather than Empty.

Below is my script for anyone interested.

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