920557 - My Favorites menu doesn't always list favorites when signed in

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: API, defect)

Description

[Baris Derin]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.8; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/24.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20130910160258

Steps to reproduce:

After signing in AMO, Personas Plus' My Favorites menu doesn't always list your favorites.


Actual results:

Personas Plus' My Favorites menu doesn't always list your favorites. This happens just for a few users. Strangely one user reported that her first account retrieves My Favorites personas but after signing out and logging back with another AMO account throws the same bug result and My Favorites menu option of Personas Plus only shows "Sign In to Access Your Favorites". Switching back to first account brings back normal behaviour and the personas favorites. 

For a few other users there is no success with any account and favorites personas can not be retrieved in My Favorites of Personas Plus always saying "Sign In to Access Your Favorites" although the user is already signed in.


Expected results:

After signing in AMO, Personas Plus' My Favorites menu should list your favorites.

Comment 1

[Baris Derin]

There should be a problem with the algorithm which populates the My Favorites menu option. Although the user is signed in, "Sign In to Access Your Favorites" comes up in the menu. Please note that this happens just for a few users but it needs to be fixed because users are sending enough support requests.

While checking the bug, I noticed that favorites.json of Personas plus gets emptied somehow especially when Firefox is restarted.

There should be an ensurer mechanism which should check :

+ favorites.json for emptiness
+ for lacking personas in My Favorites menu option when user is signed in

Related

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=510123

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=528297

Comment 2

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

Are there reliable steps to reproduce? You mentioned something about user settings in a separate thread, but I see no mention of that here.

Comment 3

[Baris Derin]

I could not re-produce this bug. On Mac and Windows, with old and new Firefox profiles, Personas Plus works as expected with my AMO accounts. But the bug is real and people are complaining about.

From the user I got feedback, he tries to sign in with two different AMO accounts. Account1 works as expected and favorites are fetched correctly. But when the users logs out AMO and logs in back with Account2 the favorites somehow are not fetched or processed correctly. 

Account1 user's favorites are fetched correctly and populated inside the Personas Plus' My Favorites menu popup. But because there is a bug, Account2 favorites can not be retrieved and thus saying "Sign In to Access Your Favorites" although the user is already signed in. 

So if we can not re-produce the bug, we need to trace back it. The code which produces "Sign In to Access Your Favorites" menu option although the user is already signed in is:

    https://addons.mozilla.org/EN-us/firefox/files/browse/205426/file/content/personas.js#L986

    item.setAttribute("label", this._strings.get("favoritesSignIn"));

which is inside the very if conditional:

    https://addons.mozilla.org/EN-us/firefox/files/browse/205426/file/content/personas.js#L984

    if (!PersonaService.favorites) {

That means if there is no favorites or if the favorites property erased from the memory somehow, "Sign In to Access Your Favorites" will be populated inside My Favorites menu although the user is already signed in. There is something preventing Personas Plus to update favorites.json file properly or there is a problem with the algorithm which creates PersonaService.favorites property.

This actually happens just for some users and especially sporadically. And it is not necessarily happens for account switching. Some users can not retrieve favorites for her very one account. Also (this happened only once for me strangely) I noticed that restarting Firefox may empty the favorites.json file even though the user stays logged in the AMO.

Comment 4

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

I need to know which users are experiencing problems and how reliably they occur before I can do anything.

Comment 5

[sdb1947]

Submitted at the request of Baris Derin.  I am a Firefox User attempting to use the Personas Plus (Ver 1.7.2.1)and Personas Rotator (Ver. 8.0) - Windows XP Professional SP3.  When I click on the Personas icon, then Favourites I receive the message "Sign In To Access Your Favorites".  I click on this item and FF directs to the 'My Favorites" page which is displayed.  Despite having this page opened at the time there is no indication that Personas has registered the Personas within the 'My Favorites' page.  When I repeat the process during this session, the Icon still returns the same message to sign in to My Favorites.  The Persona is changed with each execution of FF but the single Persona remains for that entire session.  I hope this is sufficient information for your purposes.  Thanking you.

Comment 6

[morten.foyn]

I herby submit my bug report. I use the latest Firefox and Personas. I have Windows 7 home premium fully updated. This is the problem.

1) When I go to Options in Personas Rotator and try to select "My Favorites" it tells me I need to login (Rotation of My Favorites requires logging in the system. Would you like to log in now?)
2) I select OK it takes me to the Add Ons page to login
3) I login (OR I am already logged in)
4) I go to the Options in Personas Rotator and try to select "My Favorites" AGAIN.....and AGAIN it tells me I need to Login
5) I login (OR I am already logged in)
6) I go to the Options in Personas Rotator and try to select "My Favorites" AGAIN.....and AGAIN it tells me I need to Login
.
.
.
100) I am stuck in this horrible endless LOGIN LOOP
I have two account´s, but this problem is only present with one of them. 
Hoping you will be able to help
Thanks.

Comment 7

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

Thanks. I tried logging into your account on our dev server and encountered the same issue. It did work eventually, but the request takes quite a long time to complete, since you seem to have thousands of favorites. It's also notable that your favorites collection has no name, which I have no explanation for.

I'll see what more I can find out.

Comment 8

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

OK, so the problem is essentially that you have so many favorites that in most cases a gateway timeout occurs before the server finishes generating the response. I have a patch for Personas Plus to properly report that an error occurred rather than simply asking you to login. It might also be worth fixing this on AMO.

Comment 9

[Baris Derin]

Kris, would it be possible to bring back PersonaService.isUserSignedIn property on Personas Plus? I sometimes need that property for the sign-in state to use on Personas Rotator.

Comment 10

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

(In reply to Kris Maglione [:kmag] from comment #8)
> OK, so the problem is essentially that you have so many favorites that in
> most cases a gateway timeout occurs before the server finishes generating
> the response.

Should the API be modified to support returning the favorites in fixed-size chunks rather than all at once?

Comment 11

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

No, there's no reliable way to determine whether the user is signed in from the AMO cookie anymore.

(In reply to Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] from comment #10)
> Should the API be modified to support returning the favorites in fixed-size
> chunks rather than all at once?

I don't think that would solve anything. If we rotate all of them, people will complain. Having to make multiple requests to fetch them all seems less than ideal. We should be able to optimize the API to generate the results much more quickly, though. As it stands, I believe it has to make several queries for each persona it returns.

Comment 12

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

Punting this over to AMO. The inaccurate message Personas Plus is fixed, but the API is still not returning results for the request.

Comment 13

[thosrtanner58]

Can I say I'm getting this issue and it's a little upsetting. There seem to be two variants:

1) The 'My favorites' menu has an entry that says 'log in to access your favorites', even when you are logged in.
2) The 'My favorites' menu has an entry that says 'An error occurred when loading your favorites'

For some reason thunderbird seems more likely to succeed on logging in (not a lot more admittedly).
I have quite a number of favourites as I'm disorganised, and would categorise them, but there seems to be no way I can rotate through categories

Comment 14

[Takanori MATSUURA]

This bug lies at rest in the graveyard.