Fantasy Grounds is losing its mind...

[Zozzle]

...or at least all of its relevant information.

Here's what's happening. We play, everything's OK, and I shut down FG. The next time I start it up, I get no error, but nothing is there -- no characters, no notes, nothing. The db.xml file goes from 1,200+ K

I've saved previous versions of the db.xml file and end reverting to something that's (now) a month and a half old. That particular db.xml starts up fine, but of course all the information is way out of date. It works, but when I quit FG...see above.

Is there a log file somewhere? Or a way to turn on debugging?

[EugeneZ]

I went through some similar troubles. It ended up having to do with two things:

1) Using the "X" to quit instead of the menus. Honestly, the program should treat these the same way, but it does not appear to.

2) Messing with the db.xml file while FG2 is running. Ummm... don't.

[Zozzle]

Thanks, Eugene. I quit out of FG using the right-click X-yes-really option. I don't touch the db.xml file while FG is up. That's bad ju-ju.

In my original post, I didn't finish my sentence: The db.xml file goes from 1,200+ kb to 15 kb when it doesn't work right.

[Oberoten]

Well, the problem might lay in somewhere in the text a formatted text control or a textfield someone had entered a > or a < or other exotic combinations that might produce strange results on the forming of the XML.

When FG finds the XML broken it tries to fix the problem. Only if it is the dredded < or > symbols it'll think things are well and thoroughly borked and re-save only the data it can read.

- Obe

[zabulus]

Whoa... that is good to know, Oberoten. I frequently use --> in my story descriptions to indicate a result of certain actions for myself. Guess I will stop doing that :)

[Ged]

Zozzle,

If you want us to take look at the issue, please send the db.xml to support (at) fantasygrounds.com.

[Spyke]

Whoa... that is good to know, Oberoten. I frequently use --> in my story descriptions to indicate a result of certain actions for myself. Guess I will stop doing that :)'-->' is the xml code for 'end comment' so as Obe suggests you may well have the culprit there...

Edit: Having said that, I've just tried to reproduce this and it all works fine. Which ruleset are you using?

Spyke

[zabulus]

*grin* You should read further than the first character of our name, Spyke
I am a different person than the original poster :)

[EugeneZ]

I don't have the code to Fantasy Grounds or anything, but if they are properly using an XML library, it will encode xml entities before saving them and decode them when outputting data, so I highly doubt that ankle brackets are the issue.

Also... Spyke, --> is not code, it's markup. I know, I know, nitpick... but as an XML developer this is a misconception that I have to deal with every day!

[Zozzle]

Through some grunt work, I was able to narrow down the problem to this problem child within a character block:
<>
<holder name="BLag" owner="true" />
</>

To give it some context:
<saves>
<holder name="BLag" owner="true" />
<fortitude>
<holder name="BLag" owner="true" />
<base type="number">7</base>
<misc type="number">3</misc>
<temporary type="number">0</temporary>
<total type="number">13</total>
</fortitude>
<intvalue>
<holder name="BLag" owner="true" />
<>
<holder name="BLag" owner="true" />
</>
</intvalue>
...

I'm not sure how it got there, but it was in several places. If FG hits a block like that when it starts, it wipes out the entire db.xml file and starts from scratch.

Once I removed all instances of the problem block, FG started fine.

Thanks to all who responded. Thanks especially, to Ged who offered to take a look at the file, though it turned out not to be necessary.

[Spyke]

*grin* You should read further than the first character of our name, Spyke
I am a different person than the original poster :)Whoops! :o


Also... Spyke, --> is not code, it's markup. I know, I know, nitpick... but as an XML developer this is a misconception that I have to deal with every day!Thanks, I'll try to remember that: I'd hate to be alienating my xml developer friends!

Incidentally, I like the idea of ankle brackets. ;)

Spyke

[EugeneZ]

Hahah, yeah, I recently learned that there are many names for those little things! Up here in New England, I've always heard them referred to as ankle brackets. :p

I suppose it's probably a colloquialism of ANGLE brackets but that's what I'm used to.