Marking planner items complete then incomplete then complete successfully?

[DeletedUser]

I've built a tool to let students work a bit more directly with their planner items. Problem is, I'm running into a problem toggling planner items complete and incomplete. No matter how I've sliced it, I run out of bites at the apple -- eventually it just gets stuck in a state that I can't change.

Here are the two approaches that I've taken:

First approach.

• Mark an item that has no override complete by creating a new override. Works.
• Mark that item incomplete by updating the existing override. Works.
• Mark that item complete again by updating the existing override. Does not work: the override remains in the incomplete state.

Second approach.

• Mark an item that has no override complete by creating a new override. Works.
• Mark that item incomplete by deleting the existing override. Works.
• Mark that item complete again by creating a new override. Does not work: I get an error that that item has "already been claimed" (by an override that has been deleted).

Is there a third, workable, workflow that I'm somehow missing here?

Thanks!

[SethBattis · Accepted solution]

This is me (as in: I posted this). I found, after a bunch of experimentation, that the issue was something in my own script (of course). I think it was perhaps not passing the correct Content-Type header. In any event: the Planner Item API endpoint _does_ work as expected.

[Quander]

Yeah, I ran into something similar. It sounds like there's some weird caching or stale state issue going on, like the system thinks the override still exists even after you delete it. What worked for me was making sure the deletion is actually confirmed on the backend before trying to recreate the override. I added a small delay or a refresh of the planner state after deletion and before creating a new one, and that seemed to help. Maybe try forcing a refetch of the item's status before the second "complete" action?

[SethBattis]

@Quander That makes a lot of sense. I had a pretty long delay in between deletion and re-creation -- but I also didn't _confirm_ that the deletion had actually happened. And if the deletion was compromised by whatever thumb-fingered error I made that compromised the toggling overrides, they could well have not actually been deleted. Thanks!