Koha 23.05: Remove leading or trailing whitespace characters from input fields

by Esther Melander on Dec 1, 2023

Bug 30358 adds a new system preference called StripWhitespaceChars. This will strip leading and trailing whitespace characters from all fields when cataloging both bibliographic and authority records. This may be handy when copy-pasting data.

Whitespace characters that will be stripped are:

• Spaces
• New lines
• Carriage returns
• Tabs

An example of copy-paste behavior with this system preference disabled:

Highlight and copy the barcode in a holdings table.

Paste the barcode into the search bar and see the extra spaces before the barcode:

Enabling the system preference will remove those extra spaces when pasting:

Some notes on this system preference:

• There is concern in the community that this system preference may break some note fields.
• This system preference appears to work in many fields in Koha and not just in cataloging. For example, it works when pasting the barcode example above in the checkout box for circulation.
• There is also a bug reported in the community about this.

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