nowdatabase/documentation/reference-validation-messages.md

Reference validation message sources

Grouped required-field errors

• The string "At least one of the following fields is required: …" is produced in orCheck inside frontend/src/shared/validators/reference.ts.
• orCheck builds the list of field keys based on ref_type_id and checks whether any of those fields contain a non-empty string. When none do, it returns the concatenated message.
• validateReference wires orCheck into the validators for title_primary, title_secondary, title_series, and gen_notes, so the message appears both in inline errors and aggregate validation results.

Display labels for reference fields

• Human-readable labels per reference type come from the database table ref_field_name (via Prisma model ref_field_name), which stores ref_field_name (display text) alongside field_name (schema key) scoped by ref_type_id.
• The backend returns these labels through getReferenceTypes in backend/src/services/reference.ts, which fetches ref_ref_type records including their ref_field_name children, and buildReferenceDisplayLabelMap converts them into a lookup keyed by ref_type_id.
• validateEntireReference passes this displayLabelMap into validateReference, enabling orCheck to swap field keys for per-type display labels when building the grouped required-field message.
• On the frontend, ReferenceDetails injects the same display-label map into validateReference so both inline and aggregate messages show labels like "Title", "Organisation", or "Notes" instead of raw schema keys for the active reference type.