Field Notes Upload Failure/Error

[+MastahMatt]

I have an Oregon 450. Today I found several geocaches, one of which required me to enter a comment in the field notes. On the Oregon, and I assume all of the other Garmin models, you are able to enter symbols as well as alphanumerics. One of the symbols is the double quotation mark.

 

This is the entry in the geocache_visits.txt file on the device that is causing the problem:

[+Bear and Ragged]

I have an Oregon 450. Today I found several geocaches, one of which required me to enter a comment in the field notes. On the Oregon, and I assume all of the other Garmin models, you are able to enter symbols as well as alphanumerics. One of the symbols is the double quotation mark.

 

This is the entry in the geocache_visits.txt file on the device that is causing the problem:

 

Seem to remember there was a problem...

 

Use a text editor to change the geocache_visits.txt file, then reload to the site.

 

(Not sure if an update to the oregon software solved things or not. )

[Moun10Bike]

If you look at the content of the field notes in a text editor, you will see that all log text is enclosed between quote marks. Adding additional quote marks into the log then creates nested quotes which cause parser problems for the uploader. It's best to avoid quote marks in the content altogether (or use single quote marks in their place).

[+MastahMatt]

If you look at the content of the field notes in a text editor, you will see that all log text is enclosed between quote marks. Adding additional quote marks into the log then creates nested quotes which cause parser problems for the uploader. It's best to avoid quote marks in the content altogether (or use single quote marks in their place).

 

Of course. As I said above, this is what I did. What I also discovered afterward was the nightmare fact that the stupid device creates the field notes file in UTF-16 Little Endian format. I did not know this, and I spent almost two hours trying to figure out why, when I modified the file in a normal text editor, geocaching.com completely ignored the uploaded file. It was not cool. Even trying to re-save the old .txt file with the correct format didn't work after I had already saved it as UTF-8. So I had to basically retype the field notes in by hand. There were only a few to do, so it wasn't too bad, but it was very frustrating.

 

Anyhow, I myself have written code to handle file imports with quotation problems like this - in several languages including .NET. This shouldn't be a huge issue to fix for the site, but the whole situation could be huge for someone who has no clue how to edit their .txt file.

[+Walts Hunting]

Given how seldom this appears to come up (I don't recall it ever being brought up) it seems a better use of GS resources to just remind the occasional person to not do it rather than divert programmers from something worthwhile like never letting a non validated account log a cache.

[+ecanderson]

Had it happen to me ages ago -- there are several threads on this topic, but most are quite dated. My first experience was when attempting to add a log on my new Oregon 450 defining the size of a container and I'd used " in a field note to save space vs. spelling out 'inches'. Clobbered things but good. For what it's worth, the site will actually accept and process logs UP TO the one containing the quote character, but then fails to process the balance of the file. It requires only a single quote character to hose the results.

 

Like the OP, I also discovered the hard way that opening the geocache_visits.txt file and making any edit produced an unusable file. It wasn't until I opened one in CodeWrite that I happened to have been in hex mode and realized what they were doing there. Until then, all of the 'blanks' looked like ordinary spaces in a text editor.

 

Edit:

Found a couple of the old threads where this was mentioned:

 

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=316896

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=295228

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=278506

Edited April 22, 2014 by ecanderson

[+The A-Team]

Like the OP, I also discovered the hard way that opening the geocache_visits.txt file and making any edit produced an unusable file.

Funny, I've edited my geocache_visits.txt file many times over the last few years and have never had a problem. The current file on my Oregon 450 hasn't been deleted since 2011 (I know, the site suggests deleting it, but I've never seen a need to), contains probably on the order of 2000 field notes, and has been edited many dozens of times using either Notepad or Textpad. After each time I go caching, I upload the file and all of the new field notes show up as expected.

[+Walts Hunting]

I to have edited mine with notepad.

[+ecanderson]

Be very careful how you go about it. There are a pile of nulls in there that separate each character -- they're not spaces.