Allow Blank Contexts in (Radiocarbon/Dendro) Date Form?

[MartinHinz]

In the modal form for editing a radiocarbon date, I am unable to save the date unless I provide an arbitrary context name. I am not sure if this is a bug or intended behavior, but given that most of our current data has blank contexts, we should consider allowing empty contexts.

Proposed Solutions

• Allow blank contexts in the form by removing the validation requirement.
• If we decide that context names should remain mandatory, we should revisit whether this aligns with our dataset and workflow.

Relevant Code
Currently, the context model enforces:

validates :name, presence: true

If we want to allow blank contexts, we should remove or modify this validation.

Next Steps
@joeroe, what do you think? Should we enable blank contexts or enforce names consistently?

Side note
This is only relevant currently for Radiocarbon dates, since due to the importer the test data for dendro all come with a specified context.

[joeroe]

"Intended" is a strong word but it may be desirable per #371

[MartinHinz]

Since this will serve as a placeholder, I see two possible approaches for the current issue:

1. Populate the placeholder when the form is opened for editing, ensuring that it gets stored in the database upon the next save.
2. Run a database update to assign the placeholder value to all entries with missing names.

Which option do you prefer, or do you have an alternative suggestion?