Problem

Dropdown menus in the custom item builder and class selector were stuck on their default values and could not be changed. This affected multiple dropdowns including:

• Item Type (weapon, armor, potion, etc.)
• Item Rarity (common, uncommon, rare, etc.)
• Weapon properties (Simple/Martial, Melee/Ranged)
• Damage Type
• Ability and Speed Modifier Types
• Class selector

Root Cause

When ClojureScript/Reagent renders keyword values like :weapon or :armor in HTML select options, React stringifies them to ":weapon" and ":armor" (preserving the colon character). When the dropdown value is retrieved from the DOM event, it comes back as the string ":weapon".

Additionally, some code paths dispatch events directly with keyword values (e.g., the batch-set code that sets default weapon properties dispatches with :simple and :melee).

The original event handlers used (keyword ...) which had issues:

• (keyword ":weapon") → ::weapon ❌ Wrong! (creates namespaced keyword with empty namespace)
• (keyword :simple) → :simple ✓ Works (keyword passthrough)

This mismatch caused dropdown selections to fail silently because the stored value never matched what was expected.

Solution

Created a ->keyword helper function that properly handles both string inputs from dropdowns and keyword inputs from direct dispatch:

(defn ->keyword
  "Converts a value to a keyword, handling both string and keyword inputs.
   Strings like \":weapon\" are parsed correctly to :weapon.
   Keywords like :weapon are returned as-is."
  [v]
  (if (keyword? v)
    v
    (reader/read-string v)))

This ensures:

• Dropdown string values like ":weapon" are correctly parsed to :weapon
• Direct keyword dispatch values like :simple are passed through unchanged

Changes

• src/cljs/orcpub/dnd/e5/events.cljs: Added ->keyword helper function and updated 7 event handlers for item builder dropdowns
• src/cljs/orcpub/character_builder.cljs: Added ->keyword helper function and updated class selector dropdown handler

Total: 26 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-) - minimal changes that properly handle both dropdown selections and direct event dispatch.

Testing

All affected dropdowns now properly update when users select new values:

• ✅ Custom item Type and Rarity dropdowns work
• ✅ Weapon property dropdowns (Simple/Martial, Melee/Ranged, Damage Type) work
• ✅ Ability and Speed modifier type dropdowns work
• ✅ Class selector dropdown works
• ✅ Batch-set default values for custom weapons work correctly

Fixes the issue described in the upstream orcpub repository where dropdown menus could not be changed from their default values.

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