Forms losing layout in upgrade

[BrandonJamesBorders]

What happened?

I upgraded freeform from 5.5.10 to 5.6.8 alongside a craft upgrade from 5.4.3 to 5.4.9.

During the upgrade, all our flexbox forms "lost" their layout setting. Forms using other values were not impacted.

Frontend error:

Form settings:

Resaving the form settings with the value "Flexbox" resolved the frontend error.

I inspected a DB backup and noted that this line is probably the culprit in the freeform_forms table and metadata column.

Before:
"formattingTemplate": "flexbox.twig",

After setting it it becomes:
"formattingTemplate": "flexbox/index.twig",

Freeform Edition

Pro

Freeform Version

5.6.8

Craft Version

5.4.9

When did this issue start?

After upgrading from older Freeform version

Previous Freeform Version

5.5.10

[kjmartens]

I'm sorry this happened @BrandonJamesBorders.

There is a migration that is supposed to take care of this... is there any chance you didn't run the migration before viewing the forms in the front end or form builder? 🙂

[BrandonJamesBorders]

I don't believe so.

Locally I upgraded via the craft CLI, and it happened there. I did not notice (shame on me) and pushed it to production, the pipeline ran the migrate/all command and finished without errors.

Total 4 new Freeform migrations to be applied:
    - m240813_161214_UpdateStatusColors
    - m240814_120443_RefactorGridAndFlexboxFormattingTemplatePaths
    - m240903_145017_CreateFormGroupsTable
    - m240903_145034_CreateFormGroupsEntriesTable

Backing up the database ... done
*** applying m240813_161214_UpdateStatusColors
*** applied m240813_161214_UpdateStatusColors (time: 0.019s)

*** applying m240814_1204[43](https://github.com/borders-dev/bw-fusion/actions/runs/11690969901/job/32557090788#step:12:44)_RefactorGridAndFlexboxFormattingTemplatePaths
*** applied m240814_120[44](https://github.com/borders-dev/bw-fusion/actions/runs/11690969901/job/32557090788#step:12:45)3_RefactorGridAndFlexboxFormattingTemplatePaths (time: 0.039s)

*** applying m240903_1[45](https://github.com/borders-dev/bw-fusion/actions/runs/11690969901/job/32557090788#step:12:46)017_CreateFormGroupsTable
    > create table {{%freeform_forms_groups}} ... done (time: 0.019s)
    > add foreign key craft_fk_hagbyczufactunnemcxrufdpmirwdjtqzcmq: {{%freeform_forms_groups}} (siteId) references {{%sites}} (id) ... done (time: 0.045s)
*** applied m240903_145017_CreateFormGroupsTable (time: 0.073s)

*** applying m240903_145034_CreateFormGroupsEntriesTable
    > create table {{%freeform_forms_groups_entries}} ... done (time: 0.020s)
    > add foreign key craft_fk_tvxzxjppxuklqkffuygwivrjkqspclazbjyv: {{%freeform_forms_groups_entries}} (groupId) references {{%freeform_forms_groups}} (id) ... done (time: 0.0[48](https://github.com/borders-dev/bw-fusion/actions/runs/11690969901/job/32557090788#step:12:49)s)
    > add foreign key craft_fk_aejdrpxjanoidbivrnshcerewhqjxfoosdyb: {{%freeform_forms_groups_entries}} (formId) references {{%freeform_forms}} (id) ... done (time: 0.054s)
*** applied m240903_14[50](https://github.com/borders-dev/bw-fusion/actions/runs/11690969901/job/32557090788#step:12:51)34_CreateFormGroupsEntriesTable (time: 0.132s)

I restored a snapshot just now and tried to get the error to happen again and was unable to reproduce. 🤷

[kjmartens]

Hmm, that is interesting. So to confirm, you tried duplicating the issue again now but it didn't happen?

I haven't seen this happen to anyone else yet, but I've noted this for us to check into. I'm also thinking we will create a fallback to something like Flexbox in the event a formatting template is missing or invalid. I imagine it would be better to get an incorrectly styled form than a broken page. 🙂

[BrandonJamesBorders]

That's correct. A fallback would be a smart thing to add!