Placeholder texts in form fields don’t get localized

[jsorva]

For example at the end of this page:

https://plus.cs.aalto.fi/o1/2025/w01/ch04/?hl=en#feedback

there’s some Finnish text in the English form:

It could be that we’ve misconfigured something, but if so, I don’t know what. The yaml config for our forms looks like this:

  - compare_method: int
    extra_info:
      class: form-group time-usage-question required standard place-inline
      minimum: 3
      placeholder|i18n:
        en: (Please enter the time in minutes.)
        fi: (Syötä aika minuutteina.)
      validationMessage|i18n:
        en: Please enter the time in minutes.
        fi: Anna aika minuutteina.
    key: timespent

[ihalaij1]

I just tested with a similar setup, and the placeholder language changed correctly when switching languages.
It might be some configuration problem in O1, but I haven't found out what yet.

intro_fi.rst

.. freetext:: 0 int
    :required:
    :key: timespent
    :height: 1
    :length: 20
    :class: time-usage-question
    :extra: minimum=3.;placeholder=(Syötä aika minuutteina.)

    **Time spent:**

    Please estimate **the total number of minutes** you spent on this chapter (reading, assignments,
    etc.). You don’t have to be exact, but if you can produce an estimate to within 15 minutes or
    half an hour, that would be great.

intro_en.rst

.. freetext:: 0 int
    :required:
    :key: timespent
    :height: 1
    :length: 20
    :class: time-usage-question
    :extra: minimum=3.;placeholder=(Enter time in minutes.)

    **Time spent:**

    Please estimate **the total number of minutes** you spent on this chapter (reading, assignments,
    etc.). You don’t have to be exact, but if you can produce an estimate to within 15 minutes or
    half an hour, that would be great.

[ihalaij1]

@jsorva Could you try to change the w01/ch04_fi.rst and w01/ch04_en.rst so that they include the specific language version of the time_input_field.rst like this (at the bottom of the file):

ch04_fi.rst

.. include:: ../_feedback/time_input_field_fi.rst

ch04_en.rst

.. include:: ../_feedback/time_input_field_en.rst

[jsorva]

Thanks for looking into this!

The _fi and _en bits aren’t there in rst, but they should be added automatically during builds by this O1-specific tweak.

[ihalaij1]

Okay. I ran the O1 course locally with Jutut so I could debug this, and it just works:

Could it be that the course just needs to be rebuilt? I'm not really sure what else it could be (I ran ./docker-compile.sh).

[jsorva]

I don’t know! But this is not a new issue (even though I only reported it recently). This is how it’s worked in production for a long time already, and still how it works in the 2026 version of O1, which has been very recently built: https://plus.cs.aalto.fi/o1/2026/w01/ch04/?hl=en#feedback

[ihalaij1]

Can I push my built files to the "s2026" branch, so we could see if it gets fixed? A lot of build files got updated.

EDIT: Nvm, the changes shouldn't be relevant for this issue.

[ihalaij1]

Update:

I found a difference between my local setup that works, and production. The production A+ API for the exercise is missing a translation for the placeholder. I don't know why this happens (yet). I wonder if removing the parentheses would fix the placeholder, since the non-parentheses translation still exists in production.

https://plus.cs.aalto.fi/api/v2/exercises/85431/

Local:

"form_i18n": {
            ...
            "Anna aika minuutteina.": {
                "fi": "Anna aika minuutteina.",
                "en": "Please enter the time in minutes."
            },
            "(Syötä aika minuutteina.)": {
                "fi": "(Syötä aika minuutteina.)",
                "en": "(Please enter the time in minutes.)"
            },
            ...

Production:

"form_i18n": {
            ...
            "Anna aika minuutteina.": {
                "fi": "Anna aika minuutteina.",
                "en": "Please enter the time in minutes."
            },
            ...

The production API also includes some duplicates that aren't present locally, such as these:

"form_i18n": {
            ...
            "täysin samaa mieltä_duplicate": {
                "fi": "täysin samaa mieltä",
                "en": "fully agree"
            },
            "jokseenkin samaa mieltä_duplicate": {
                "fi": "jokseenkin samaa mieltä",
                "en": "somewhat agree"
            },
            "jokseenkin eri mieltä_duplicate": {
                "fi": "jokseenkin eri mieltä",
                "en": "somewhat disagree"
            },
            "täysin eri mieltä_duplicate": {
                "fi": "täysin eri mieltä",
                "en": "fully disagree"
            },
            ...

@murhum1 Can we "refresh" the course exercises in production somehow, so that the API updates these fields?

Is it the cached_content that we need to invalidate? Isn't that already done by the Edit Course -> "Clear content cache" button?

a-plus/exercise/api/views.py

Line 93 in 56297c6

context.update({'cached_content': self.content})

[ihalaij1]

@murhum1 tried to see if a fresh course + course instance on minus.cs.aalto.fi would have gotten rid of this bug, but it didn't.
We are still not sure what causes the differences between local and production APIs.