1697392 - Failing to get search suggestions with "FormHistoryClient constructed with both a formField and an inputName" error (Stop using formAutofill in SearchSuggestionsController)

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Search, defect, P2)

Description

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Sometimes search suggestions are not fetched and the console dumps a lot of "FormHistoryClient constructed with both a formField and an inputName" errors.

This is actually due to toolkit/components/satchel/nsFormFillController.cpp having a stuck mFocusedInput value. This value is set by startControllingInput and unset by stopControllingInput, so we're somehow missing the latter.

This actually happened to me when visiting about:preferences shortly after the browser startup, then mFocusedInput got stuck to the about:preferences search field, and when I tried to use the urlbar, FormFillController thought I was trying to access search-history from an input field.

I was not yet able to produce reproducible STR, it may be a race condition.

Ideally just focusing another autofill input field should exit the condition, since at that point startControllingInput would terminate the previous session.

Comment 1

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

I think we should stop using formAutofill in SearchSuggestionsController, and straight query FormHistory.jsm. We don't really need all the abstraction in the middle.

Comment 2

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

I found a possible way to reproduce this, it requires to restore previous session on startup, and have the last open tab be about:config. There's something with the focus change there not unregistering the controller. Didn't debug further yet.

Comment 4

[Shane Hughes [:aminomancer]]

OMG this gave me quite a laugh. about:config is definitely a 100% reliable way to reproduce it. I've been driving myself insane for days trying to figure out what happened. 1 error for every key pressed in the urlbar! I thought I must have broken one of my databases while experimenting with urlbar provider mods. I restarted like 50 times trying to figure out why sometimes it doesn't happen. I guess it just happens that when I'm testing with my real profile with like 300 tabs, I always restart/clear startup cache with my active tab on about pages because they load so much faster. So I was unknowingly reproducing it almost every time just by habit lol.

Comment 5

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

This is the code we should replace: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/14781effaa15c12b1652beb75f021489567bad8f/toolkit/components/search/SearchSuggestionController.sys.mjs#350-411

Comment 6

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

I have a WIP patch for this, that I've had hanging around for a while.

Comment 7

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Attachment: Bug 1697392 - Stop using formAutofill in SearchSuggestionsController - query FormHistory direct. r?mak!

This should cut out most of the abstraction in the middle of the nsIAutoComplete interfaces.

Depends on D162843

Comment 8

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Attachment: Bug 1697392 - Fix logging when a remte search suggestion fails. r?mak!

Comment 9

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Attachment: Bug 1697392 - Simplify SearchSuggestionController to return the form history results, rather than an FormAutoCompleteResult. r?mak!

This moves creating FormAutoCompleteResult out of the controller and into SearchSuggestions.
SearchSuggestions is only used for the autocomplete interface and so this simplifies the work for content search and address bar.

Depends on D162844

Comment 10

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/b5cc114309cd
Fix logging when a remte search suggestion fails. r=mak
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/cf20f4f809be
Stop using formAutofill in SearchSuggestionsController - query FormHistory direct. r=mak,credential-management-reviewers,sgalich
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/22cb2543a2a1
Simplify SearchSuggestionController to return the form history results, rather than an FormAutoCompleteResult. r=mak

Comment 11

[Natalia Csoregi [:nataliaCs]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/b5cc114309cd
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/cf20f4f809be
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/22cb2543a2a1