Designer elements get wiped out on save

I have had a form on our site working for the last two months, but just noticed its content was blank on our website. I am running Joomla 3.7.3 with the ChronoForms 6.0.5 component installed. In May my webserver upgraded from PHP 5 to 7, but I have continued to receive submissions through our form up until June 23.
When I opened my form the Designer tab was blank! I cleared my Joomla cache to make sure nothing was hanging, I then went into a saved, unpublished copy of the same form I already had and switched the alias names and published it to see if it would work. Once it saved, the Designer elements were all wiped out!
I have my max input set to 5000, and just increased it to 6000.
I now have restored a saved backup, and it seems to save and preserve the Designer elements ok. But this is concerning to me--any issues you're aware of regarding this? Any precautions I can take to prevent critical form elements from disappearing again?
Thank you.

I'm still wrestling with this. Form elements continue to get wiped blank after I work on them for awhile.

Is it perhaps a glitch in the "copy" feature, and combination with cache? I have copied the form a few times to try to preserve my work.

A new issue, is when working in a form, I will receive an error: "Duplicate column name 'abcde'" However, the field does not actually exist in this form. When ever I try to place a field with a name from another form I have this issue.

Hi jmeidal,

Please open your database and find the chronoengine_forms6 table, edit the "views" field and set its type to "longtext", this step should be done automatically after the next update, sorry for the trouble!

Best regards,
Max

OK, thanks for the tip!

Is this specifically to fix the type elements which have a "duplicate column" issue? I assume I don't change it for all elements.

Thanks!

I changed "type":"field_text" to "type":"longtext" in my database for a field that had the duplicate issue. Now the element won't open/expand in Designer. I'll keep playing around with it.

Also, regarding the original issue on this thread (sorry to bundle the issues, I thought they may be related), I found one of my forms to contain valuable elements in Design, I changes the Alias name, and clicked Apply. Immediately all my Designer elements disappeared! Not fun.

OK, I found an issue which is causing my Designer element to get wiped out, I believe!

I have a text field with the Value set to: <?php echo date('m/d/Y'); ?>

Joomla, my webserver with PHP 7.0.20 or ChronoForms6 doesn't like this and wipes out the elements immediately upon Save or Apply. HOWEVER, the form holding this code value worked fine from May-June. It was just in the last two weeks (probably upon a Save of another form adjustment) that I began noticing this not being acceptable.

I'll begin trying to work around this, and not making use of this.

Thanks for your feedback.

No, I kept that code out, have been updating my form. Cleared cache to check for changes--and all the Designer elements were empty again.

OK, I found perhaps something helpful to replicate this.

I add a Hidden Field to page one, move it above my button, and change the Name and ID to "status", and the value to "applied", then click Save. Then I clear my cache (using RegularLabs plugin), my Design elements all disappear.
Link to my form backup is here.

This is private content

This also occurs when I change a new Text Field to the same attributes....
When I change the name and ID to "app_status" it still occurs.

Sorry to keep going with this, but really trying to figure this out.
I now have avoided trying to make a status field at all, and then went back and added my PHP date functions.
I Saved and Backed up my file, then cleared the cache, and everything was gone. I restored my backup, and everything in Designer was still blank--so it seems not to be the cache wiping anything at least.

I'm still having my code break. I keep backing up, so I noticed one of my "broken" databases actually is a good size. So I don't think I'm looking data, just something corrupted.

Included here is a copy of my latest progress, a backup file which is broken:

This is private content

I found my "duplicate columns" issue resolved when I took off the Auto Manage Table in the Data Save element.

Hi jmeidal,

The fix is actually to change the "field type" of the "views" field in the "table" to "longtext", what you did is that you changed some value, but you need to open the table then click "structure" then edit the "views" field.

Best regards,
Max

Ah, copy that--thanks. I'll adjust the table structure now.

I haven't had data loss since changing the data structure, thanks!

However, I have this issue now when I attempt to expand my form. I have an error on Saving, which limits my Designer elements.
"An error has occurred.
1118 Row size too large. The maximum row size for the used table type, not counting BLOBs, is 65535. This includes storage overhead, check the manual. You have to change some columns to TEXT or BLOBs"

I'm not an expert here, but that size corresponds to TEXT type, and LONGTEXT should allow for 4M bytes. Not sure why this limitation.

I adjusted my form some, cleared my Joomla cache, and then took off the "Auto Manage" option in Save Date. It is continuing to save now.