New devices get literal '[]' string in devParentRelType instead of the configured default

[Marvelous2095]

Description

Every newly discovered device is inserted with devParentRelType set to the literal 4-character string "[]" instead of the configured NEWDEV_devParentRelType default ("default"). This isn't an empty/null value — it's the Python string representation of an empty list, stored verbatim in a text column that's meant to hold one of: default, child, logical, nic, virtual.

Root cause (found by reading the source)

server/plugins/newdev_template/config.json, the devParentRelType setting definition:

{
  "function": "devParentRelType",
  "type": {
    "dataType": "array",
    "elements": [
      { "elementType": "select", "elementOptions": [{ "orderable": "true"}], "transformers": ["deviceRelType"] }
    ]
  },
  "default_value": "default",
  "options": ["default", "child", "logical", "nic", "virtual"],
  ...
}

dataType is "array" (and the single select element has no "multiple": true), even though:

• devParentRelType is a single-valued column (one relationship type per device), and
• default_value is a plain scalar string "default", not a list.

On this instance, SELECT setValue FROM Settings WHERE setKey='NEWDEV_devParentRelType' currently returns the string '[]', not 'default' — the array-typed setting resolved to an empty-list representation instead of falling back to the scalar default_value.

server/scan/device_handling.py then inserts this raw setting value verbatim for every new device:

'{sanitize_SQL_input(get_setting_value("NEWDEV_devParentRelType"))}',

so every new device's devParentRelType becomes the literal string "[]".

Impact

• devParentRelType no longer matches any of the 5 documented values for brand-new devices.
• Cosmetically this happens to fall into the same "unstyled/default" bucket in the network tree color/line-style logic (getRelationshipConf() in front/js/ui_components.js only special-cases child/nic/virtual/logical), so it isn't visually obvious — but any code doing an exact comparison against "default" (or against "") will not match, and the field shows the confusing raw value [] when inspected directly (e.g. via API/DB).
• Confirmed reproducible right now: creating a brand-new device (e.g. via ARPSCAN discovering a MAC for the first time) immediately gets devParentRelType = '[]'.

Suggested fix

Either:

1. Change dataType to "string" for this setting (matching other genuinely single-valued select settings, e.g. ARPSCAN_RUN), since devParentRelType is not multi-valued, or
2. If dataType: array must stay for UI reasons, fix the settings resolution so an array-typed setting with no explicit value falls back to the scalar default_value instead of producing str([]).

Environment

• Image: ghcr.io/netalertx/netalertx (recent digest as of 2026-09-18)
• Reproducible via: let ARPSCAN discover a brand new MAC, then check devParentRelType for that device.

[jokob-sk]

Hi,

Thanks for the report.

Can you please try to use the dev image? Seems like a duplicate #1784

This should be available/fixed in the next release.
It would be great if you could test the ghcr.io/netalertx/netalertx-dev / ghcr.io/netalertx/netalertx-dev-unsafe Docker image in ~15 minutes (or once the latest GitHub Action finishes).

⚠️ Please back up everything first, or ideally spin up a separate container (make sure you use a unique PORT and GRAPHQL_PORT if running instances concurrently) with its own DB and config (a copy of your current setup), as database changes may occur.

After updating:

• Click the 🔄 refresh button in the blue header at the top
• Hard refresh your browser cache (shift + reload) to force js and css files reload