Issue #1887 — planMilestonesEdit.php create/edit form wrote 8 E_WARNING rows per render

Issue: #1887 Branch: fix/issue-1887-planmilestonesedit-warnings Status: VERIFIED-FIXED — regression suite Issue #1887 5/5 PASS Related: #1726 (found while verifying it), #1888 (sibling defect on the failed-doCreate path, filed not fixed).

Symptom

Rendering the legacy Plan Milestones create/edit form (lib/plan/planMilestonesEdit.php?doAction=create|edit) wrote 8 log_level=2 E_WARNING rows per request into the Event Viewer, from the compiled Smarty template. The form still rendered, but every legacy deep link polluted the diagnostic log.

Investigation (measured before any code was touched)

Environment: app http://localhost:8082, DB testlink (freshly imported — 0 projects, 0 events), admin/admin. Fixture tmp/fixtures_1887.php created testproject PMS1887 (id=1, priority enabled), testplan P8 Plan (id=2), milestone P8 Milestone (id=1).

probe	result
GET ?doAction=create&tplan_id=2	HTTP 200, 15712 bytes
COUNT(events WHERE log_level=2) before / after	0 → 8

The 8 rows map to the compiled gui/templates/dashio/plan/planMilestonesEdit.tpl: managerURL (:18), tplan_id (:123), tproject_id (:124), tprojOpt->testPriorityEnabled (:169, 2 rows), cancelActionJS (:222), tprojOpt->testPriorityEnabled (:229, 2 rows).

Root cause chain

#	file:line	what happens
1	lib/plan/planMilestonesEdit.php:18	$gui = initialize_gui($db,$args);
2	lib/plan/planMilestonesEdit.php:207-221	initialize_gui() returns a stdClass with only user_feedback/main_descr/action_descr/grants. It never calls initUserEnv() and never sets tproject_id/tplan_id/tprojOpt/managerURL/cancelActionJS.
3	lib/plan/planMilestonesEdit.php:136-141	renderGui() merges only the command result's properties (create()/edit() return main_descr/action_descr/template/submit_button_label/milestone) — none of the 5 missing props.
4	gui/templates/dashio/plan/planMilestonesEdit.tpl:18,123,124,169,222,229	reads the missing props unguarded ⇒ 8 E_WARNINGs under PHP 8.

Why it breaks now: the controller has never set these props (verified back to 8376db18b, 2009-era). Under PHP 5/7 an unset object-property read was E_NOTICE, which Smarty/TestLink suppressed; PHP 8 promoted it to E_WARNING, and tLog() persists every warning into events. A 15-year-old latent defect only started polluting the Event Viewer after the PHP 8 port.

Sibling comparison: lib/plan/planMilestonesView.php:66-96 gets tproject_id/tplan_id/tprojOpt from initUserEnv() (lib/functions/common.php:1718-1720,1861) and sets managerURL itself (:93-94). The edit controller simply omitted the equivalent initialisation.

Blast radius

• Only this controller+template pair. grep -rn "cancelActionJS" lib/plan/ → 0 hits; the other writers (lib/testcases/*) set it themselves.
• managerURL is dead in this template (defined :18-21, never re-used; the form action is hardcoded at :119).
• tplan_id/tproject_id feed the form's hidden inputs (:123-124); unset, the POST fell back to session values (init_args():83-91), so the form kept working.
• tprojOpt->testPriorityEnabled drives the priority branch (:169-209): unset ⇒ the form always rendered the "no priorities" layout even for a priority-enabled project.

The fix (minimal, 1 file, +17 lines)

lib/plan/planMilestonesEdit.php initialize_gui() — populate the 5 props from $argsObj plus the project options, mirroring planMilestonesView.php:

$gui->tproject_id = intval($argsObj->tproject_id);
$gui->tplan_id = intval($argsObj->tplan_id);
$gui->managerURL = "lib/plan/planMilestonesEdit.php" .
                   "?tproject_id={$gui->tproject_id}&tplan_id={$gui->tplan_id}";
$tprjMgr = new testproject($dbHandler);
$gui->tprojOpt = $tprjMgr->getOptions($gui->tproject_id);
$gui->cancelActionJS = '';   // empty => historical history.back() fallback

Why this method (and what was rejected)

• Populate the controller, not guard the template. The .tpl could be silenced with |default:'' / isset(), but that only removes the noise: the priority branch stays in the wrong layout and the hidden tplan_id/tproject_id stay empty. Populating restores the intended behaviour and removes the warnings.
• cancelActionJS = '' keeps the template's historical history.back() fallback, so no cancel behaviour changes.
• No initUserEnv() call. That helper performs access/redirect side effects (menu, grants, effective role) that this lightweight editor does not need; assigning the exact five props is smaller and side-effect-free.

After the fix

The create form renders the priority-enabled layout (three percentage inputs) with a clean Event Viewer:

Verification

Regression suite Issue #1887, appended to tmp/TLU_Test_Cases.md.

case	before	after
?doAction=create&tplan_id=2	200, 15712 B, +8 warnings	200, 16940 B, +0 warnings
?doAction=edit&id=1&tplan_id=2	+8 warnings	+0 warnings, name prefilled
priority project	single "no priority" field	3 inputs (low/medium/high_priority_tcases)
hidden ids	empty	tplan_id=2, tproject_id=1
?doAction=bogus (#1726)	302 + 1 ERROR	unchanged
php -l	—	No syntax errors detected

Known, deliberately NOT fixed here

• #1888 — a failed doCreate submit (invalid target_date format) re-renders the form with $gui->milestone unset, producing 16 E_WARNING rows. doCreate() (lib/plan/planMilestonesCommands.class.php:105-178) never assigns milestone on its validation-failure paths. Separate code path, filed with the bug label (FIX-ISSUE §4).

How to re-test in one command

# login, then create + edit must add ZERO log_level=2 rows
curl -s -b tl_cookie.txt http://localhost:8082/lib/plan/planMilestonesEdit.php?doAction=create&tplan_id=2 >/dev/null
mysql -h 127.0.0.1 -utestlink -ptestlink testlink -N -e "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM events WHERE log_level=2;"