Problem with Date Picker When Adding an Observation

[d_kurek]

Platform: Website

Browser: Chrome Version 88.0.4324.190 (Official Build) (64-bit)

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/upload

Screenshots: Screen shots a

ttached.

Description of problem:

Step 1: Click upload button.

Step 2: Click “Choose Files” and select an image from your PC. Make sure the image selected DOES NOT have any date in the “Date Taken” element in the image metadata.

Step 3: Click on the Date Picker to try and set the date.

By chance the photo I was trying to upload did not have a date set in the “Date Taken” element in the image metadata …this field was blank. The blank field caused the Date Picker to not work properly. It detected that there was an invalid date, but would not allow you to choose a date. I worked around this issue by setting the “Date Taken” using Windows Explorer utility.

This is probably an unlikely scenario as all cameras / devices will normally set a value in this field when the picture is taken, but on the off chnace that the users camera settings are incorrect (as mine were as I had my camera repaired and some of the settings were reset), then this issue will occur.

Thank you.

[bouteloua]

Hi @d_kurek, thanks for filling out the report. I tried it out with an image that has no date taken listed:

but I didn’t receive any errors when uploading (no date listed, and calendar picker works OK):

You might need to email the original image to the staff at help@inaturalist.org so they can take a look.

[d_kurek]

Hello @bouteloua , I have sent iNat Help an email with image.
Thank you.

[tiwane]

Thanks for sending the image, @d_kurek, it’s definitely missing some date info in the normal spots so I’d say this is probably expected behavior. But we can maybe try to use different metadata (eg date/time stored in the GPS data) in these situations.

You can still choose a date, just delete “Invalid Date” and the picker on the left works fine. Or you can type in the properly formatted date/time on the card itself. We should be able to handle that a bit more gracefully, though…