637408 - 'cfx docs' /api/idle handler throws silent exception, resets timer anyways

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Add-on SDK Graveyard :: Documentation, defect, P2)

Description

[Brian Warner [:warner :bwarner]]

Attachment: don't throw exception in the /api/idle handler

A combination of bugs is causing a minor error in the 'cfx docs' server, then failing to actually break anything. But it'd be nice to clean up.

The WSGI webserver thread started by 'cfx docs' is supposed to exit as soon as the user closes the docs-viewing tab which it auto-opened. To accomplish this, the server terminates after 60 seconds of no requests, and the frontend javascript code does an idle ping (a GET to /api/idle) every 5 seconds.

"Cork" on IRC noticed that the docs server shuts down surprisingly if you have JS disabled in the browser (we could stand to have a warning about that, but that's not the purpose of this ticket). In the process of discovering that, I noticed that doing a GET of /api/idle actually throws an exception and returns a 500 "internal server error". The frontend code stops pinging if it sees a 501 or 404. So the exception would have caused the frontend to stop pinging (and thus the server to stop running before the tab was closed, and thus be an actual bug), except that 500!=501. Oh, and the exception isn't logged, because the server is normally run in "quiet" mode.

The attached patch fixes the exception.

Comment 1

[Will Bamberg [:wbamberg]]

Thanks for this fix Brian. It looks good to me, shall I just apply it and close the bug?

Comment 2

[Brian Warner [:warner :bwarner]]

sounds good by me. thanks!

Comment 3

[Will Bamberg [:wbamberg]]

Fixed by: https://github.com/mozilla/addon-sdk/commit/f85ee223b9f86b0102c1733b85b8774b27a74411