Changing event rule action type messes up Conditions field

[markkuleinio]

Deployment Type

Self-hosted

NetBox Version

v3.7.1

Python Version

3.11

Steps to Reproduce

1. Go to Operations - Event Rules - Add
2. Set Conditions = { "and": [{"attr": "status.value", "value": "deprecated"}]}
3. Select Action type = Script

Expected Behavior

Conditions field stays as-is

Observed Behavior

Conditions field is rewritten as invalid JSON:

"{ \"and\": [{\"attr\": \"status.value\", \"value\": \"deprecated\"}]}"

The quoting is added with every change of the Action type.

This also happens if editing an existing event rule and changing the Action type.

Workaround

• Copy the Conditions field somewhere
• Change the Action type
• Paste the Conditions field back

[markkuleinio]

Btw, the error message (that happens if the event rule with the modified Conditions is saved) is slightly incorrect:

Ruleset must be a dictionary, not <class 'django.forms.fields.JSONString'>.
Enter conditions in JSON format.

A Python dictionary is not necessarily valid JSON (take for example None vs. null, or single-quotes vs. double-quotes)

[jeremystretch]

This is occurring because the initial data passed as a query parameter when re-rendering the form is interpreted as a string and automatically escaped. The same behavior can be observed by manually passing initial data to the form. For instance, GET /extras/event-rules/add/?conditions={"foo": 123} populates the value "{\"foo\": 123}" (a string) into the conditions field.

We need some logic in place to detect and load initial data as JSON, rather than treating it as a string. @DanSheps I'm going to take this one if you don't mind as I think we can fix this pretty easily under the field class' prepare_value() method.