Not possible to use _ in Document type/Media type aliases anymore?

[BatJan]

Which Umbraco version are you using?

16.2.0

Bug summary

In our own "Baseline" we have a setup where we for some certain aliases use an underscore in the alias name. However when I needed to add more aliases using the underscore in Umbraco 16.2.0 I found out that in the UI it's currently not possible. Not sure when or why this has been introduced but I consider it a bug and probably not the best UX either since whenever I type the _ character and want to write more after adding it it disappears and the letter written after it becomes uppercase. I know it's also an issue on 16.3.0, which I made @nul800sebastiaan test out 😇 - Seb also told me that he can create aliases containing underscores just fine using the Management API. So it seems it's only in the frontend where this happens.

So if I enter an alias of "my_little_settings" it will be forced to be "myLittleSettings"... as soon as I enter "my_" then when I enter "my_l" it instantly becomes "myL"... Please see the video attached.

Update: Turns out it happens when using "-" too. So there are probably more scenarios to consider around this.

alias-underscore-bug.mp4

Specifics

It happens to me when trying to add "underscores" in aliases when adding fields to document types and media types - I imagine it's the same logic being used both places and I guess it will happen anywhere in the UI where it's possible to add an alias like templates, document types and media types themselves etc.

Steps to reproduce

Please see the video attached in the summary.

Expected result / actual result

It should be possible to use underscores.

[github-actions]

Hi there @BatJan!

Firstly, a big thank you for raising this issue. Every piece of feedback we receive helps us to make Umbraco better.

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[nul800sebastiaan]

Turns out it's happening here: https://github.com/umbraco/Umbraco-CMS/blob/main/src/Umbraco.Web.UI.Client/src/packages/content/property-type/workspace/views/settings/property-workspace-view-settings.element.ts#L111

When you type anything in the alias field, it "generates" the alias again. However, an underscore is a perfectly acceptable character to have in the alias, the server accepts it just fine. Removing generateAlias() here fixes the problem but we don't sanitize the alias, so I can type a space and an exclamation mark. The server sanitizes it fine when saving it though!

So I would suggest removing generateAlias() here and keeping the same behavior as the doctype alias, accept all characters and the server will clean it up when saving.

That would fix this problem, but maybe in the future we should have a frontend sanitizer, that prevents me from entering characters that won't be saved - however it is probably hard to keep the logic the same on the server as on the frontend.

[BatJan]

@nul800sebastiaan I've done a PR follwoing your instructions now 👍🏻