Why is JIRA 4.4.4 recognizing empty blank spaces as a valid value for issues created in JIRA.

[Mustafa Shah]

We are experiening an issue where Users are able to select a blank space in a mandatory drop down field and enter it as a value or a valid entry in JIRA. This is occurring in JIRA 4.4.4 and we did not encounter the same issue in JIRA 4.1.2. Is this a new feature in JIRA 4.4.4 and how do we fix it?

[Harry Chan · Accepted solution]

Hi, can you please go to configure the custom field and check what values have been entered? Is there a blank entry in the list of options?

[Mustafa Shah]

Hi Harry, thank you for replying to my question. There is a blank entry in the Custom Field which comes up first in the list of options to select but when the Users selected the blank entry in JIRA 4.1.2 in a Mandatory field, it would give them an error message saying that you have to select a valid value from the list. The same thing does not seem to be happening in JIRA version 4.4.4. What could be causing this to happen in JIRA version 4.4.4? Is there a setting I need to check in the configuration File or settings? Thank you Harry.

[Harry Chan]

JIRA changed from using text fields to options for select list in later releases to support editing and renaming. What you will need to do is to edit the options for the customfield.

[Mustafa Shah]

Hi, there is no proper fix for this problem. JIRA by default recognizes the blank space in the drop down Custom Field as a valid option and the only way to change that behavior is to remove the blank space and choose one of the valid options in the Custom Field as a Default Field. This does not apply to system defined fields in JIRA where the blank space is not recognized as a valid entry. I am not sure if this applies to all versions of JIRA but definitely applies to our version 4.4.4. Hope this helps.