Views throws Field is required error when Hierarchical Select is used in exposed filter prior to making selection.

Wanted to add, in case you are going to test functionality of the required filter search, you can find results under:

Automotive > Dealerships

Business and Professional Services > Computer Service & Repair

Food and Beverage > Deli / Delicatessen

(Thought I'd add that in so aren't guessing at searches or pulling blank results if testing functionality)

Being the hack and trash cobbler that I am, I thought maybe I'd just search all Views components for the error handler form_get_errors() which I found in views.inc and form.inc in views/includes.

I thought perhaps the obvious solution would be to remove lines 418-425 from views inc:

// Don't render exposed filter form when there's form errors.
    // Applies when filters are in a block ("exposed_block" option).
    if (form_get_errors() && empty($form_state['rerender'])) {
      return NULL;
    }

    return $output;
  }

unfortunately, that threw the following error site-wide:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_CLASS, expecting T_FUNCTION in .../sites/all/modules/views/includes/view.inc on line 1619

which helped reinforce the fact that you should probably have some understanding of the code functions before you remove them...

ah well, trial and error is my friend as long as I can undo my experimentaions ;)

I made an interesting discovery while playing with this. If you go to http://www.sanduskyspotlight.com/biz-search-req , we see that the error is pregenerated before making any selection and on pageload, a 'field is required' message is already present. Selecting any category from the dropdown that has a sub category initiates the sub category's own dropdown box and again throws a 'field is required' warning before any selection is made.

Here is where it gets interesting... if you choose any primary category and hit apply without choosing a sub category, it applies the filter and returns results. Once this has been done once, you can change the primary category to any value (except the blank value at the start of the dropdown) and upon doing so a subcategory dropdown, for whatever primary category you have chosen, is generated without throwing the 'field is required' error unlike the way it functions prior to an initial search being performed.

Thanks for the reply Merlin,

I will present this back under the issue queue for HS.

One thought on a work around (as the functionality seems relatively flawless after an initial search has been initiated) is toset a blank category as 'default'. Now in configuring the "Configure filter Taxonomy: Term" there is no option to set a default category (that I can find). Is the functionality required to implement a default category something that is implemented (or would need to be implemented) in Views, or is that functionality that would need to be implemented from within the HS module itself?

After hours of cobbling and reading a lot of similar issues... (though for different modules) I managed to make it work...

The fix was to just create an empty primary category (I called it "Select Business Category" ) and set the operator to 'is one of' and then used the always empty "Select Business Category" as the entry for 'Select terms from vocabulary Business Classification', not sure how I got to a HS list that allowed me to choose a single category as default as prior to all the cobbling, it always defaulted to 'any' or 'none'. Oddly, the ever present 'Any' has been replaced by 'None' whether the filter is set to optional or not.

http://www.sanduskyspotlight.com/business-search-alpha

Unfortunately, now that I got it working, I am unable to place it in a panel as anything besides a block. When it was throwing the errors, I had it in a panel as a page, which is desirable because I want it to return results without it navigating away from the main page as it does when the exposed form is placed in a block.

Granted this is ugly.. and has a host of drawbacks (such as if someone ever actually added their business to the 'Select Business Category' category) but for the time being it works... sorta... just not in a panel , lol

Alternately, I could just use a second view to display the results of the exposed filter block that I have been able to get to work.. I haven't the slightest idea how to do that or if it's even possible, but if the top panel could be the system block and then the results view could be put into a panel below, that would fix me up in a convoluted, but functional way that doesn't take users away from the main page ;)

(sorry if my post is semi incoherent, been working on this like 7 hours straight and my poor brain is now mush)