While editing one of our CMS collections I noticed the truly terrible UX of form validation. I really thought this was generally solved in the world, but here comes Webflow showing everyone how not do it, basically.
If you have a date field in your CMS collection, you have to enter the date exactly correct, so “MM/DD/YYYY”. You cannot leave the / out, like in basically any other form. If you do you are represented with an error called “Validation Failure” upon save.
Really, Webflow?
It doesn’t show in which field the error occurred, either by telling you the field or highlighting it.
It doesn’t actually let you correct your error, since the Save field stays disabled, even if you change the date field or select a date using the calendar dropdown.
It’s like a textbook entry on how NOT to do error validation in forms.
I am disappointed, Webflow! This is literally UX 101…
I agree that this is a UX issue. I suggest you add an item to the wishlist if none exists. Maybe then someone on the team will be able to review it and put it in front of the product team.
This is still an error, and I can not use the CMS because of it. Also why is a customer (OP) required to put this up as a wishlist item? This is clearly a bug, or rather faulty code. Can we please have a solution for this?
Most of the time, the issue stems from incorrect validation of the date field. If you encounter something like this, just ensure the field is properly filled in.
I’ve found that validation errors seem to be handled inadequately in Webflow collections in general.
For instance, you can also get a similar issue if your collection (A) contains multi-reference fields to another collection (B).
To illustrate, if you’re adding a new item to Collection A and include a multi-reference item from Collection B. If the multi-reference item isn’t published itself (maybe as you’ve added it on the fly), then you try to publish the Collection A item, you will get a validation error. The CMS will then prevent you from saving Collection item A (even as a draft), and you can only exit without saving, completely losing your item data (not ideal on a collection item with lots of fields).
I’ve already raised this with the WF team, but they said it was just a limitation of the data system within WF
