Geographic Bounding Box validation error message doesn't reflect all validation rules (e.g. message reads that East number must be greater than West, North number must be greater than South, but Dataverse accepts equal numbers)

[jggautier]

What steps does it take to reproduce the issue?

• When does this issue occur?
  When trying to save a dataset that has invalid metadata in any set of Geographic Bounding Box fields and when using the validation error message to review the validity of metadata in those fields

• Which page(s) does it occurs on?
  On the dataset edit page

• What happens?
  When trying to save a dataset that has invalid metadata in a Geographic Bounding Box, the validation error message tells users that "East must be greater than West and North must be greater than South." But the dataset can be saved when the metadata doesn't follow that rule. That is when:

  • the number in the Easternmost (Right) Longitude field is equal to the number in the Westernmost (Left) Longitude field
  • the number in the Northernmost (Top) Latitude field is equal to the number in the Southernmost (Bottom) Latitude field

  In Add validation for entered coordinate values in Geospatial metadata (bounding boxes, etc) #9547 and in Add validation for entered coordinate values in Geospatial metadata #10142, @landreev wrote that when East equals West and when North equals South, Dataverse should consider the Geographic Bounding Box as valid. So it's intended that equal West and East are valid and equal North and South are valid, despite what the validation error message tells users.

  For example, see the Geographic Bounding Box metadata of the dataset at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/WOBTGG (as of Jan 22, 2025), where "East" equals "West" and "North" equals "South", the dataset doesn't have the "Incomplete metadata" label and isn't returned in a search for "valid datasets" in the collection (https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/worldfish?q=datasetValid:false)

• To whom does it occur (all users, curators, superusers)?
  Curators, superusers, depositors

• What did you expect to happen?
  The validation error message reflects all validation rules, including that East and West can be equal and that North and South can be equal.

Which version of Dataverse are you using?
v6.3 and v6.5

Any related open or closed issues to this bug report?

• Add validation for entered coordinate values in Geospatial metadata (bounding boxes, etc) #9547

Screenshots:
Validation error message for Geographic Bounding Box fields

Dataverse considers this metadata as valid even though the validation error tells users that "East must be greater than West and North must be greater than South."

Are you thinking about creating a pull request for this issue?
Maybe, depending how this is resolved. I'm happy to help investigate more and adjust the validation error text if we decide to do that.

[qqmyers]

What's the scope here? On demo, I can add a box with east=west and north=south and the dataset seems to be indexed correctly. Is more needed than editing

dataverse/src/main/java/propertyFiles/Bundle.properties

Line 1703 in fb36def

dataset.metadata.invalidGeospatialCoordinates=has invalid coordinates. East must be greater than West and North must be greater than South. Missing values are NOT allowed.

to add "or equal" twice?

(FWIW: I noticed the tips for the block itself don't include the constraint - they say, for example,
Easternmost coordinate delimiting the geographic extent of the Dataset. A valid range of values, expressed in decimal degrees, is -180.0 <= East Bounding Longitude Value <= 180.0.
vs
Easternmost coordinate delimiting the geographic extent of the Dataset. A valid range of values, expressed in decimal degrees, is -180.0 <= West Bounding Longitude <= East Bounding Longitude Value <= 180.0.)

[jggautier]

Good questions, thanks! I wrote that what I was expecting is that the validation message lets users know what's wrong with the metadata, so I'd consider that in scope. Adding "or equal" in the message might be better.

Are you suggesting we include the constraint in the fields' tooltips? And would that be to help only people filling in the fields? In general we don't add instructions in the tooltips about how to fill in fields, since in most cases people who are looking for datasets see the same tooltip text, and that info might be noise for them.

Following that guideline, I'm also not sure that we should include the second sentence in these fields' tooltips, the ones that start with "A valid range of values...", unless people looking for and trying to make sense of the data would find that info helpful, too. But I think that's not in the scope of this GitHub issue.