[FIXED] Issue with Anvil randomly deleting forms and rows

I’m having issues with Anvil randomly deleting forms and rows from my app. This has been happening to me regularly over the last few days (I’ve had to completely recreate one form twice) to the point where I’m starting to create clone backups. Is anyone else having similar issues? A screenshot of the most recent time is below where a row has been deleted randomly.

I’ve just realised there is version history but in any case the deletion still persists when I go to earlier versions.

That sounds very frustrating! However, this isn’t something we’ve seen before (otherwise we’d have squashed it already) - it sounds like it’s to do with your pattern of using Anvil. Can you give us any more information about what you’re doing when this occurs? Did it disappear mid-keystroke while you were editing, or when you next loaded the app? Obviously the ideal would be to describe a sequence of actions that always causes the problem, but any information you give will help us narrow this down.


PS: If you want to keep an explicit backup, there’s a much easier way to do this than cloning your app! Just hit the “Save Version” button on the bottom left of the editor, enter a label, and you can save a snapshot of your app with a specific name! That backup is preserved and immutable, and you can restore it at any time by clicking “View history”

Thanks for getting back to me Meredydd.

I tend to make changes then preview those changes via the ‘run’ button and it tends to happen after I press ‘run’. The ‘run’ fails and says either a row or form is missing. It doesn’t happen every time but has happened a few times over the last few days.

The weirdest part is that the component that gets deleted also disappears from the previous version on “View History”. For example I can see a version where it says I have edited the component that disappeared but when I ‘restore’ that version or the version prior the component is still missing.

:slight_smile: I came to the forum to search for this exact issue - I had a form disappear overnight as well from my app’s current dev version - however the same form was available in the app’s published version, which is an older version of course.

If I try to make the form again, Anvil says the app is unable to save and that browser needs refreshing.

What kind of changes are you making? Also, I am very surprised to hear that about the history! If you have an example of this issue that’s captured in the version history, can you send an email to support@anvil.works with:

  • The ID of the app (you’ll see it in the title bar)
  • A description of which form has disappeared, and the corresponding entry in the version history (eg "it’s there in the history entry at 13:19 US Eastern time, but gone in the one I saved at 13:21), so we can extract it from the logs

I’m tentatively moving this thread to Bug Reports, pending further investigation

@i.rajeshwari, same invitation to you! Especially if you can identify a history revision we can look at to see when it disappeared, and if you can list the actions you took in the meantime (edited this, created that, opened the other), that would be really helpful!

OK - on it. Thanks for looking into this!

OK, not sure where the app ID is but my app in question is called sAInaptic: AI driven learning.

So here’s the story:
The form involved is called animalPlantCells_ModelAns. It was there in the app when it was published at 11:32pm on Nov 20th in the version called sainaptic_v21.

The form appears to have been last edited on Nov 25th at 11:05pm.

I believe I noticed that it had disappeared on Nov 27th. Since then I have tried to make the form again but Anvil does not allow it. I’m afraid there was no particularly different thing I did - I noticed its not there when I wanted to duplicate that form to edit it in order to make another form of that kind.

In fact since then I have not been able to make any additional forms and cannot see these attempts in version history either. For eg. I tried to make a form called mock_test yesterday, and it did not allow me.

I was convinced that I’ve reached my allowance on the free plan? But wanted to check if this issue has been documented here, and found this thread.

Hope this helps.

My mistake, having checked again only the version in the version log that refers to the components being edited has them missing. They are restored in the previous version before that version. In any case I have emailed the details for further investigation of the random deletion.

What do you mean by “I have tried to make the form again but Anvil does not allow it”? That definitely should not be happening! What’s the error message?

The app ID can be found in your address bar when you open the app (it’ll be something like https://anvil.works/build#app:12A3B4C56D78, and the alphanumeric sequence at the end is the ID - please send that to support@anvil.works, with permission for us to go in and look at it/reproduce your problem!)

Ah OK, yes e-mailed to support@anvil.works.

“I have tried to make the form again but Anvil does not allow it” meaning I get the following error:

Update: Thank you both for sharing! We have replicated the problem, and we’re waving a mallet at it with a menacing expression…

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And this issue has now been identified and resolved! Thanks again for your help in tracking this down.