General developer forum

I'm trying to set data in a hidden mod_form input from validation() but even though I can see that the value has been set if I check the input value afterward, once I get to add_instance() in lib.php the hidden input value is gone.

The reason I want to set this value from validation is that I'm doing a series of validations and requests to validate that a Youtube video ID is valid. If it is, I calculate the video's aspect ratio from the YT API response I got.

sot it looks a bit like...

function validation($data, $files) {
    ...
    if(yt) {
        $input = $mform->getElement("aspect_ratio[$i]");
        $input->setValue($aspectratio);
    }
}

Assuming everything else validates, the data passed to add_instance() has an empty value for this element. All the other data is there.

Is there a way to do this the way I'm trying to do it or do I need to replicate that logic but from definition_after_data() instead? To me it feels illogical to try and calculate this aspect ratio on any user entered data without first validating it's an actual valid Youtube video with a valid response from the Youtube API.

I guess I could also do it from add_instance but that means querying the YT API once more to get the exact same data I just pulled from the validation.

Thanks for any help Moodle community!