Render error to user if base path reserved [WHIT-2884] by ChrisBAshton · Pull Request #10914 · alphagov/whitehall

ChrisBAshton · 2025-12-03T15:56:26Z

What

When trying to create a document that has an already reserved base path, catch the error and render an error with the title field on the new document form.

Further details

rework the exception capturing to delete the saved edition if the base path conflict occurs (otherwise the edition would still be created and the user could continue to edit it by accessing through the edition search)
display an error on the title field of the form as this is the field that determines the base path of a document

Why

Continues the work of #10912, now presenting an error to the user on the form instead of rendering a server error and removing the contents of the form.

Visual Differences

On attempting to create a new draft with the same base path:

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ChrisBAshton

Thanks for nudging this towards the finish line, @patrickpatrickpatrick ! Some comments below.

ChrisBAshton

LGTM 👍 one possible optimisation below.

I raised the PR, so can't approve it - so feel free to go ahead and merge it @patrickpatrickpatrick !

ChrisBAshton · 2026-01-12T13:59:19Z

    end

-    def self.ensure_base_path_is_associated_with_this_content_id!(base_path, content_id)
+    def self.ensure_base_path_is_associated_with_this_content_id!(instance, content)


This can be simplified further I think? To just take instance? (And then use instance.base_path instead of content[:base_path]...?)

I'm not sure, since content[:base_path] comes from the presenter of the instance and there's at least one instance of that being derived from presenter and not from the model.

The user attempts to create a document with the same base path as a published edition then destroy the newly saved edition. This is required as the edition is saved before the conflict check. If the edition is not destroyed then the user can still edit and attempt to save and/or force publish the conflicting new edition.

Instead of presenting a server error to the user if they try and create an edition that has the base path of another published edition, the error is now presented to the user.

Reverts #10914. The PR did more than originally intended. 1. In #10912, we added a check to ensure that the generated base path of a document didn't already exist in Publishing API under a different content ID. We raised an exception in such cases. This was to accommodate the one or two cases where Whitehall has somehow produced a document that already exists under the same route in Publishing API, e.g. a 'legacy' News Article from several years ago, conflicting with a 'StandardEdition' News Article created recently. All such cases are resolved now. 2. In #10914, we intended to capture the exception and display it to the user, to offer a slightly more user friendly experience. However, the scope of the PR grew to include uniqueness checks on the *title* as well as the base path. We didn't anticipate any issues at the time. 3. There are over 12k documents in Whitehall that have clashing titles (or rather, have slugs that clash but for the fact that FriendlyId auto-increments the slug, e.g. `foo` and `foo--2`). The validation added in #10914 meant that already-published documents whose titles/slugs clash with other documents (when the 'sequence' suffix is dropped) could not have new drafts created. This has led to several support tickets. 4. We've been attempting to 'fix forward' this behaviour in #11003, to add the validation constraints *only* on 'first draft' editions, but there is a fair bit of complexity to consider. In the short term, therefore, we've decided to roll back the changes from #10914, to allow us a bit of breathing room to look at the problem again more holistically.

patrickpatrickpatrick force-pushed the avoid-accidentally-overwriting-base-path branch from 3611a8f to 9de162c Compare December 8, 2025 11:44

Base automatically changed from avoid-accidentally-overwriting-base-path to main December 9, 2025 09:59

patrickpatrickpatrick force-pushed the catch-base-path-exception-and-show-user branch 2 times, most recently from f02d8a6 to 4383c4b Compare December 9, 2025 13:54

patrickpatrickpatrick force-pushed the catch-base-path-exception-and-show-user branch 10 times, most recently from a396a17 to 025310d Compare December 22, 2025 15:46

patrickpatrickpatrick changed the title ~~WIP: Attempt to catch exception and show user error message~~ Attempt to catch exception and show user error message Dec 23, 2025

patrickpatrickpatrick force-pushed the catch-base-path-exception-and-show-user branch 3 times, most recently from 5ddabe7 to 7e59046 Compare January 6, 2026 15:13

patrickpatrickpatrick changed the title ~~Attempt to catch exception and show user error message~~ Render error to user if base path reserved [WHIT-2884] Jan 6, 2026

patrickpatrickpatrick force-pushed the catch-base-path-exception-and-show-user branch 9 times, most recently from 519163d to ae69cf1 Compare January 7, 2026 11:45

patrickpatrickpatrick marked this pull request as ready for review January 7, 2026 11:46

patrickpatrickpatrick force-pushed the catch-base-path-exception-and-show-user branch from ae69cf1 to 8b7de83 Compare January 7, 2026 11:49

ChrisBAshton commented Jan 8, 2026

View reviewed changes

Comment thread features/news-article.feature Outdated

Comment thread app/models/edition.rb

ChrisBAshton commented Jan 8, 2026

View reviewed changes

Comment thread app/controllers/admin/editions_controller.rb

ChrisBAshton commented Jan 8, 2026

View reviewed changes

Comment thread test/functional/admin/standard_editions_controller_test.rb Outdated

patrickpatrickpatrick force-pushed the catch-base-path-exception-and-show-user branch 3 times, most recently from f2f3246 to 5088778 Compare January 8, 2026 14:43

patrickpatrickpatrick self-assigned this Jan 8, 2026

patrickpatrickpatrick force-pushed the catch-base-path-exception-and-show-user branch 2 times, most recently from 6ad354d to 14c4330 Compare January 9, 2026 12:17

ChrisBAshton commented Jan 9, 2026

View reviewed changes

Comment thread lib/whitehall/publishing_api.rb Outdated

patrickpatrickpatrick force-pushed the catch-base-path-exception-and-show-user branch from 14c4330 to 73f513b Compare January 12, 2026 13:41

ChrisBAshton commented Jan 12, 2026

View reviewed changes

patrickpatrickpatrick and others added 2 commits January 13, 2026 10:11

Capture same base path error and display to user

85d0577

Instead of presenting a server error to the user if they try and create an edition that has the base path of another published edition, the error is now presented to the user.

patrickpatrickpatrick force-pushed the catch-base-path-exception-and-show-user branch from 73f513b to 85d0577 Compare January 13, 2026 10:11

patrickpatrickpatrick approved these changes Jan 13, 2026

View reviewed changes

patrickpatrickpatrick merged commit eabb594 into main Jan 13, 2026
25 checks passed

patrickpatrickpatrick deleted the catch-base-path-exception-and-show-user branch January 13, 2026 10:30

lauraghiorghisor-tw mentioned this pull request Jan 15, 2026

[WHIT-2931] Only check base_path availability for first draft editions #11003

Closed

ChrisBAshton mentioned this pull request Jan 20, 2026

Revert "Render error to user if base path reserved" [WHIT-2952] #11021

Merged

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Render error to user if base path reserved [WHIT-2884]#10914

Render error to user if base path reserved [WHIT-2884]#10914
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ChrisBAshton commented Dec 3, 2025 •

edited by patrickpatrickpatrick

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ChrisBAshton commented Dec 3, 2025 •

edited by patrickpatrickpatrick

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