FormLoom 4 Publishing Issue (Resolved)

I’m having a major issue whereby RW is not publishing all necessary files. And this is a LOCAL export, “publish all files”, to a clean folder every time. It’s completely random as to whether all the files are published or not.

Specifically, I’m using Big Sur on M1 chip, RW 8.7, Stacks 4.2.2, Foundation, and FormLoom 4.0.12. At the file path rw_common/plugins/formloom4 the contents of both “assets” and “Google” are random on every publish. Complete folders and files go missing, which breaks the forms completely.

If I publish enough times I eventually get the complete set of files. But it’s obviously unworkable like this, I’d like to get to the bottom of what’s causing the issue.

Did you select „publish all files“ or just published the changes?

Publish all files, every time, to a completely clean folder, every time.

rw_common/plugins/formloom4 the contents of both “assets” and “Google” are random on every publish.

The files in “rw_common” are the site-wide files. These rarely get re-published because they rarely change.

These are usually the files that Foundry or Formloom will link in to your page – the base JS files, the CSS styles that apply everywhere, etc. It’s quite rare for these to change.

After those files get published they shouldn’t ever need to be touched unless they change. They only change when you add new components or after a component gets an update.

(there are some exceptions to these rules – but this is how the vast majority of things work in RapidWeaver)

But if you’d like more specific answers to this question – about what is causing different things to be published, I’d be happy to help.

Usually it’s easiest to get a handle on things like this when you cut out a lot of the “noise” of the problem – meaning if you cut down a page to just the one component you’re interested in you’ll probably be able to see precisely how and when it gets published, based on how and when you make changes. But on a whole page full of many moving parts – or a whole site with hundreds of stacks and thousands of files it becomes nearly impossible to keep track of everything since every change can have hundreds of tiny repercussions.

Even a seemingly simple site with just ten or so pages is the product of hundreds of stacks, thousands of files, and millions of individual properties that all contribute to end product.

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Yes indeed. But that doesn’t explain why a “republish all files” to a blank folder gives me different results every time, and the site is BROKEN due to the fact that not all of the necessary files are published. It’s entirely reproducible. You can take my word for it, or I can make you a movie.

In one example, the CSS folder which should be published to rw_common/plugins/formloom4/css simply DOES NOT APPEAR so the formatting is broken. The css folder in question will appear, or not, on a whim.

I’m talking about clearing the LOCAL folder and REPUBLISHING ALL FILES but getting an INCOMPLETE publish. I’ve done it OVER and OVER and OVER again. It’s not working, and it’s a bug.

btw, @isaiah thanks for offering to help… forgive my frustration, but in all my years I’ve never seen anything quite like this. Publishing problems have been resolved by doing precisely what I’m doing: a republish to a fresh folder. In this instance, it’s roulette.

@Custard-Apple no need to apologize. happy to help.

i think it would be helpful for me to see the problem in action myself. can you send me a single page file (or the simplest project that you can create) that behaves this way?

you’ll need to share it via some sharing service (some people use Dropbox for this) and also the add-ons necessary to open the whole site. as a shortcut you can use:

to share the whole thing.

And with your project I assume just open, then republish-all-files over and over? Or is there something else necessary to make the problem occur?

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Thanks Isaiah, will do. Having a day off today though! In a nutshell, yes, all you have to do is publish all files to a local folder. Most of the time, I end up with an incomplete set of files at the file path I’ve mentioned. I’ll DM you.

@Isaiah, errrrr… how do I DM you here?

Click on his picture in the message above and hit the blue Message button.

Unfortunately, no blue message button for me…

@teefers I do believe I was simply “untrustworthy” but now that I have made several posts about not being able to DM I have gone up a trust level and now I can message.

Yeah,

If you are a new user, you’re limited on what you can do by the forum software. Keeps spamming down.

Glad you got it going.

Have you tried deleting all the generated files? I’d imagine that would force RW to regenerate all the files in rw_common.

Of course! The bug is, it doesn’t. “Re-publish all files” should do that anyway, regardless of the state of the destination folder. The published file set is incomplete, and randomly incomplete.

If I understand correctly, the problem involves incomplete publishing of files related to Formloom?

Does it work if you make a copy of the project, remove Formloom and try to re-publish?

Rob

At this stage it appears to be only the FormLoom folder inside of rw-common. The thing is, the whole site is comprised of enrolment forms, so it needs to work as is.

Probably best to contact @yabdab directly about this. Give him a simple example document. Tell him how to repeat the error. I’m sure a solution can be found.

Isaiah

I did but he said as FormLoom doesn’t handle the publishing it was an issue with RapidWeaver. Personally I wouldn’t know if it were FormLoom, Stacks, or Rapidweaver.

My guess would be it’s either FormLoom or RapidWeaver and not stacks.

FormLoom is a plugin. It can display the form on a stacks page, but the form is built by the plugin page and the directories you are having trouble with are in the Formloom subdirectory.

If you have a sample (scaled down) project file and instructions on how to make it fail perhaps @dan or someone from RealMac can have a look.

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