You lose unsaved content, if you add/edit/delete a redirect on node edit form

Marked #1800592: Deleting redirect on node form's URL Redirects tab loses node edits as a duplicate.

This affects adding, editing, and deleting redirects from an entity form -- updating title.

And I don't think there is a way to fix this with the current functionality. You'd have to submit the form in some way to save all the form data the user entered, keep that in some way, and restore it when the user returns to the form.

I'm scratching my head over how to do that -- form cache? or serialize the whole of $form_state['input'] in the query string???

Even if either were doable, it's really something that FormAPI should be providing for everyone -- not a wheel we should be inventing here.

So I think the best thing to do here is to change those links from having a redirect query to opening in new windows. The workflow is not as nice, but at least no input is lost!

Here's a patch with that change.

Admittedly I was lazy and the patch is on the latest release rather than HEAD, but I have just tried applying it myself to HEAD and it applies fine:

patching file redirect.admin.inc
patching file redirect.module
Hunk #1 succeeded at 1500 with fuzz 1 (offset -5 lines).

Maybe testbot is less tolerant of fuzz?

Here it is again on HEAD.

The patch in #5 no longer applies to 7.x-1.x-dev and probably should not be re-rolled since it's so old, but should be able to be easily re-created if this issue still applies.

Checking patch redirect.admin.inc...
Hunk #1 succeeded at 940 (offset 82 lines).
Checking patch redirect.module...
error: while searching for:
    $form['redirect']['actions']['#links']['add'] = array(
      'title' => t('Add URL redirect to this @entitytype', array('@entitytype' => drupal_strtolower($info['label']))),
      'href' => 'admin/config/search/redirect/add',
      'query' => array_filter($redirect) + drupal_get_destination(),
    );
  }

error: patch failed: redirect.module:1500
error: redirect.module: patch does not apply

Yup. Still true in D8. At least in D8 there's a cryptic warning about it. ;) Seems like target = _blank would be better than what we have now. The 'Add a URL redirect to this %type' link we're adding at #2958635: Restore link to add a redirect on node edit forms uses this, so as not to lose data.

I think some inline entity management (via ajax) would be way better than all of this mess. I doesn't see why we have to invent any wheels (core or here) trying to save and restore form state on the node form. Let's just let content admins twiddle the related redirect entities directly via AJAX, ala inline entity form. It's not exactly a parent entity and referenced children entities, but it's functionally equivalent: we want to be able to tweak related entities while mucking with a "parent" entity.

Adding #2931770: Improve usability of redirect operation links in node form as the related issue for doing this more slickly via AJAX (or potentially a modal).

I think I vote for making these operation links all use target _blank for now (since that'd be pretty quick/easy), and then use #2931770 for aa better (but longer-term) solution.

Cheers,
-Derek

> I think I vote for making these operation links all use target _blank for now (since that'd be pretty quick/easy), and then use #2931770 for aa better (but longer-term) solution.

+1.