994821 - Make Sync history engine use a pref-driven blacklist, like tabs

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Sync, defect, P5)

Description

[Agnel Kurian]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:28.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/28.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20140314220517

Steps to reproduce:

1. I have Sync setup to keep Firefox on my Android device synchronized with Firefox on my laptop (Win 7).
2. On my laptop I open some HTML pages which are stored locally on my hard disk.
3. When I launch Firefox on my Android device, I find that the URLs to HTML pages I had visited on my laptop are listed on the Android device home screen and history. These are useless because they link to files that don't exist on the Android device.



Actual results:

I find that Sync has populated my Firefox on Android homescreen with file:// URLs from the browsing history on my laptop.


Expected results:

Sync should ignore URLs which point to local files.

Comment 1

[Nick Alexander :nalexander [he/him]]

Hi Agnel, thanks for the report.  Android Sync will more-or-less show what it has downloaded; I'll check to see what we do to filter file:// URLs from your history.  This is really a Desktop issue, though -- Desktop shouldn't be uploading these history items.

Comment 2

[Nick Alexander :nalexander [he/him]]

(In reply to Nick Alexander :nalexander from comment #1)
> Hi Agnel, thanks for the report.  Android Sync will more-or-less show what
> it has downloaded; I'll check to see what we do to filter file:// URLs from
> your history.

I see that Android Sync ignores records with undesirable schemes:

http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/mobile/android/base/sync/repositories/android/RepoUtils.java#137

But we don't filter file:// URLs.  The Fennec logic is the same:

http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/mobile/android/components/build/nsAndroidHistory.cpp#263

>  This is really a Desktop issue, though -- Desktop shouldn't
> be uploading these history items.

The more I think of it, the less I am convinced this is a bug.  Clearly file:// URLs belong in the history set; question is, should they be synced across devices.  There are lots of *other* URL types that (https://m.*, for example) that only "make sense" on one (type of) device; filtering them out is not feasible.

I could be convinced to filter incoming "file://" URLs, since they are *very* unlikely to be useful on an Android device.

Comment 3

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

We should really be using 

services.sync.engine.tabs.filteredUrls

or equivalent for history, so you could filter stuff out as you wish.

Comment 4

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

Morphing this to be a desktop bug.

Comment 5

[Mike Hoye [:mhoye]]

Moving to good next, this is a bit heavy for a starter bug. rnewman, thank you for offering to mentor.

Comment 6

[Shashank VRSN Sabniveesu]

(In reply to Richard Newman [:rnewman] from comment #4)
> Morphing this to be a desktop bug.(In reply to Richard Newman [:rnewman] from comment #3)
> We should really be using 
> 
> services.sync.engine.tabs.filteredUrls
Where can I set this?

> 
> or equivalent for history, so you could filter stuff out as you wish.


I have both fennec and desktop version built.

Comment 7

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

This bug is to define a pref, similar to services.sync.engine.tabs.filteredUrls, which is applied to filter outgoing history items before they're uploaded.

Search for the use of the "filteredUrls" pref in services/sync/ to find the pattern to follow.

This is a desktop-only bug at the moment.

Comment 8

[Shashank VRSN Sabniveesu]

(In reply to Agnel Kurian from comment #0)
[Trying to reproduce this bug]

[Firefox on Desktop]
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux i686; rv:29.0) Gecko/20100101
Firefox/29.0
Build ID: 20140428194004

[Firefox on Android]
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Android; Mobile; rv:32.0) Gecko/32.0
Firefox/32.0
Build ID: 20140520170018

> User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:28.0) Gecko/20100101
> Firefox/28.0 (Beta/Release)
> Build ID: 20140314220517
> 
> Steps to reproduce:
> 
> 1. I have Sync setup to keep Firefox on my Android device synchronized with
> Firefox on my laptop (Win 7).
> 2. On my laptop I open some HTML pages which are stored locally on my hard
> disk.
> 3. When I launch Firefox on my Android device, I find that the URLs to HTML
> pages I had visited on my laptop are listed on the Android device home
> screen and history. These are useless because they link to files that don't
> exist on the Android device.
> 

Action 1: I set up sync between Firefox and Fennec. No locally opened pages reflected on Fennec.
To confirm, I checked my about:config --

services.sync.engine.tabs.filteredUrls:         ^(about:.*|chrome://weave/.*|wyciwyg:.*|file:.*)$

Action 2: https://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/services/sync/services-sync.js#33 clearly lists that these are filtered by default:

about:.*|chrome://weave/.*|wyciwyg:.*|file:.*)$"
> 
> Actual results:
> 
> I find that Sync has populated my Firefox on Android homescreen with file://
> URLs from the browsing history on my laptop.
> 
No population of locally stored pages on Fennec; Real web pages opened after these tests did show up as expected

> Expected results:
> 
> Sync should ignore URLs which point to local files.

Duly being ignored

Comment 9

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

(In reply to shashank16392 from comment #8)

> No population of locally stored pages on Fennec; Real web pages opened after
> these tests did show up as expected

Are you talking about history (this bug) or tabs (not a bug)?

What's the needinfo for?

Comment 10

[Shashank VRSN Sabniveesu]

My pointers (in previous comment) might be wrong; yet I confirm that it's the history indeed that's not reflecting.

Comment 11

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

I don't know what you're doing, but I just verified that this bug still occurs in 32.

Everything in Comment 8 indicates that either you're looking at open tabs, or you haven't had a sync occur by the time you're validating.


STR:

* On desktop, open file:///Users/rnewman/ (or a similar file that exists on your machine).
* Tools > Sync now.
* On Android, force a sync.
* Open Fennec.
* Go to the History panel.

Expected:
* "Index of file:///Users/rnewman/" does not appear at the top of the list.

Actual:
* It does.

Comment 12

[Anirudh GP(:anirudhgp)]

Hi I'd like to work on this bug. I just know the basics of javascript. Can i help with fixing this bug somehow?

Comment 13

[Divyansh Sharma [:spiro]]

Richard

I want to attempt this bug. Can you direct me where to look at for resolution.

Best.

Comment 14

[Nick Alexander :nalexander [he/him]]

(In reply to Divyansh Sharma [:spiro] from comment #13)
> Richard
> 
> I want to attempt this bug. Can you direct me where to look at for
> resolution.

Hi :spiro, rnewman has left Mozilla (so sad!) but somebody from the team that maintains Desktop Sync might have an opinion on this work.  lina, perhaps you can comment or redirect?

Comment 15

[Lina Butler [:lina]]

Hi Spiro, thanks for your interest! I don't think we want to do this anymore, so closing as WONTFIX (though we should definitely keep in mind that different platforms have different notions of valid URLs for upcoming work)...but please feel free to try another bug. :-)