Thanks @cgjgh - this is an odd one, as the appendTopic function runs as a universal line in

Which is part of the onAction handler in our ui-base. So the change you've submitted, whilst working, feels like it's covering another issue we have somewhere

feels like it's covering another issue we have somewhere

@joepavitt,
Yes indeed you are correct.
I think this is what goes wrong with the example flow from @colinl:

1. He injects a message with only a topic, not a payload. Althought this is not relevant I think, as you can see below.
2. The msg arrives in ui_base->onInput, where the msg (containing the topic) is stored in the datastore and emmited to the frontend.
3. The msg (containing the topic) arrives in the onInput of the form vue component, where the msg is ignored because it has no payload. But even if it would have a payload, only that payload would be processed (and the topic would be ignored anyway):

           onInput (msg) {
            if (msg.payload) {
                const payload = msg.payload
                for (const key in payload) {
                    this.input[key] = payload[key]
                }
                this.$nextTick(() => { this.validate() })
            }
        },
   

4. The user clicks on the form "Submit" button.
5. The onSubmit in Vue is called, which will create a new message from scratch (which only contains a payload) to the server:

   this.$socket.emit('widget-action', this.id, {
      payload: this.input
   })
   

6. The frontend msg (only containing a payload) will arrive in the ui_base-->onAction on the server side, where it will append the topic to that msg:

   msg = await appendTopic(RED, widgetConfig, wNode, msg)
   

   However the frontend msg only contains a payload, and the widgetConfig only contains msg.topic (to tell the function that it should get the topic from the msg). So NO topic is appended to the output msg...

You can solve this in various ways, but not sure what is the best way to do it:

• You could store the topic in the frontend, and send it back on commit. But seems a bit weird to use an entire roundtrip.
• You could get the topic in the onAction from the last msg in the datastore (if the msg doesn't contain a topic). But the appendTopic is implemented in a separate util file, so you cannot do that in the util file. Which means you need to append the topic to the msg before you call the appendTopic function, which is also very weird.

Any thoughts are welcome!

@cgjgh thanks for your efforts here but I will be superceeding this with #1662. It uses your methods but also ensures flow/global are evaluated. It also adds e2e tests.

Regarding the reasoning: I have been through the issue & stepped the code - Barts is correct in his summation.

Glad this is finally resolved!