Boolean field not working in example app about administrate

[littleforest]

@pablobm I feel like this behavior is actually correct. For a boolean checkbox, there is no way for the app to know whether you intend to leave the field as nil or mark it as false. Since it is a boolean field, I think it is okay that we assume it will be either true or false. I think the user should use Field::Select if they want three options for the boolean.

[pablobm]

Yeah, you may be right 🤔 My concern is that this may change data silently, without the knowledge of the admins.

For example: an app adds a "legal consent" boolean on users, but it's initially NULL to signify that the user hasn't answered the question yet. Then admins could be setting this to false unintentionally when they edit users.

Theoretically, this could be addressed by leaving NULLs unchanged, and only allow the transitions NULL-true, true-false, false-true... but then what if the admin actually wants to transition NULL-false.

I guess it's on the admins to know that a Boolean is not correct thing to use. It still worries me, as I think its an easy mistake to make.

Thoughts? Happy to close if you think it's indeed on the admins to know. I guess at the very least we should mention it in the documentation. But who reads that! 😛

[littleforest]

@pablobm maybe this is too complicated, but what if the boolean field defaults to a select with options [nil, true, false], and we could have an allow_nil: option on the BooleanField. If the user sets allow_nil: false, then it just displays the current checkbox field.

Otherwise I don't think there's really a way for a user to specify the NULL-false transition as you noted, and we would probably just have to beef up the documentation to point this out.

[pablobm]

Closing this. I think it's on admins to know, and adding it to the documentation is neither obvious nor effective (I can't imagine anyone reading it!).