Resource change request fires even when no changes are made

[Anchellon]

Resource change request fires even when no changes are made

Description

When a user visits the resource edit page and clicks save without making
any changes, the frontend still fires POST /api/resources/{id}/change_requests
with an empty payload:

{"change_request": {}}

Steps to Reproduce

1. Navigate to any resource edit page e.g. /organizations/1077/edit
2. Do not change any fields
3. Click Save
4. Open browser DevTools → Network tab
5. Observe POST /api/resources/{id}/change_requests fires with body:
   {"change_request": {}}

Root Cause

In app/pages/OrganizationEditPage.tsx, the save function compares each
resource field in state against the original API response to determine
if the resource was modified.

At line 1555, short_description is destructured from state:
const { short_description } = this.state;

At line 1572-1574, it is compared against the API response:
if (short_description !== resource.short_description) {
resourceChangeRequest.short_description = short_description;
resourceModified = true;
}

short_description has no input field on the edit page (line 860 declares
it as an optional state property but no onChange handler ever sets it),
so this.state.short_description is always undefined. However
resource.short_description returns a real string from the API for most
resources. This means:

undefined !== "some value from DB" → always true
→ resourceModified = true
→ request always fires

short_description itself never appears in the payload because
JSON.stringify silently drops undefined values, resulting in an empty
change_request object {}.

Expected Behaviour

POST /api/resources/{id}/change_requests should only fire when the user
has actually modified at least one resource field.

Actual Behaviour

The request fires on every save regardless of whether anything changed.

Impact

• Unnecessary API calls on every save
• Unnecessary change_requests rows inserted in the DB with no field_changes
• Noise in the change request audit trail

Suggested Fix

Either:

1. Remove the short_description comparison from the save function since
   there is no input field for it and it can never be changed via this page
2. Or initialise this.state.short_description from the API response in
   handleAPIGetResource so the comparison is meaningful

[Anchellon]

I would recommend removing short_description all together from the db contingent on if we are pre populating it anywhere in the organization page and even front the front end code .
Clearly the edit page of an organization (resource) does not have a field to capture this property

[richardxia]

I would recommend removing short_description all together from the db contingent on if we are pre populating it anywhere in the organization page and even front the front end code . Clearly the edit page of an organization (resource) does not have a field to capture this property

We had discussed this in a call last week, but just to record it for posterity, we should not drop it without discussing it with the stakeholders/users, since they may instead want to just add it to the list of fields that they can modify.