Best way to debug validation error encountered in admin?

[ryanlanciaux]

I'm receiving a validation error for a non-existent field on a collection in the admin. My error states The following field is invalid: email. I don't have an email field on the collection. Updates work without issue / creating other collections seemingly works as well. Any advice on how to best go about debugging this?

Collection

const Locations: CollectionConfig = {
  slug: "locations",
  admin: {
    useAsTitle: "locationName",
  },
  fields: [
    {
      name: "locationName",
      type: "text",
    },
    {
      name: "address",
      type: "text",
    },
    {
      name: "address2",
      type: "text",
    },
    {
      name: "city",
      type: "text",
    },
    {
      name: "state",
      type: "text",
    },
    {
      name: "postalCode",
      label: "Zip code",
      type: "text",
    },
  ],
};

Stack Trace

[0] [17:25:36] ERROR (payload): ValidationError: The following field is invalid: email
[0]     at new ExtendableError (.../node_modules/payload/src/errors/APIError.ts:26:11)
[0]     at new APIError (.../node_modules/payload/src/errors/APIError.ts:43:5)
[0]     at new ValidationError (.../node_modules/payload/src/errors/ValidationError.ts:6:5)
[0]     at Payload.create (.../node_modules/payload/src/collections/operations/create.ts:209:11)
[0]     at processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:96:5)
[0]     at Payload.create (.../node_modules/payload/src/collections/requestHandlers/create.ts:14:17)

[DanRibbens]

Hey @ryanlanciaux I can't see anything wrong in what you've shared. Is it possible you had an email field previously and have not saved changes or restarted the server? Using yarn dev should pick up on changes as it uses nodemon, though I have seen instances where file changes are missed for some reason, stop it and restart if you haven't already.

Here are some other thoughts:

1. Do you have a mixup on your imports and the Locations you've shared is not what is being used?
2. Is the POST request you're making to the api/locations route and not something else like api/users?
3. What does the GraphQL type look like if you try going to http://localhost:3000/api/graphql-playground, expand the schema sidebar on the right and find locations. Does it really have an email field?
4. You could inspect or console.log the app.config.collections from payload.init.onInit to see the schema. Does it have email?

payload.init( {
// [...]
onInit: (app) => {
    console.log(app.collections.locations.Model.schema.tree);
    payload.logger.info(`Payload Admin URL: ${payload.getAdminURL()}`);
  },
});

If the schema does not have it and yet the validation still expects email, I have no answer and will have to do some more digging.

[Ontopic]

I have no problems with email, but the original question is more I feel where to best access more detailed errors during validation. Now I personally write extra checks in decentralised places I have access to, but if something would be wrong with the email setting I wouldn't know where to start...

SO, maybe I'm missing a doc (I see you guys secretly tweaking it), but a clear way to get more than error in collections[3][5] would be nice

[jmikrut]

Ahhhh @ryanlanciaux I bet you are having the same exact issue as was discussed here:

#219

@Ontopic — you're actually talking about startup config validation (I think) which is totally something that we need to improve. We are using Joi and there is definitely a way to make this better. That's on our radar to improve for sure.

[ryanlanciaux]

Sorry I've been away from this for a bit and thanks so much for following-up. I'll confirm that this is what I'm bumping into and report back. 👍

[DanRibbens]

Okay! #237 adds the collection, global slugs and field names to the config validation errors.

[ryanlanciaux]

@jmikrut Following up on this a bit late BUT #219 was exactly what I was encountering. Thanks a ton