Problems with page refresh on a new collection page

[MisRob]

Summary

When I reload a new collection page then:

1. In Chrome, I can see "Page not found" but there is an error in a console:

Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: Cannot read property 'toString' of undefined

2. In Firefox, I can't see "Page not found":

Firefox behavior is problematic on different pages in this regard - see #2389.

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A general solution might be needed - see @jonboiser's comment.

Category

BUG

Usage Details

• Browser: Firefox, Chrome (different problems)

How to reproduce

1. Go to /channels
2. Navigate to "Collections" tab
3. Click "NEW COLLECTION" button
4. Reload the page

Real-life consequences

Confusion

[jonboiser]

A general solution might be needed - see @jonboiser's comment.

My suggestion was basically to not generate a UUID for a new Channel or Collection just for opening this modal. Is there a reason why we generate these IDs in advance? Or is it okay to not generate (or generate, but not put it in the URL right away) these IDs?

[MisRob]

My suggestion was basically to not generate a UUID for a new Channel or Collection just for opening this modal

This makes sense to me.

Is there a reason why we generate these IDs in advance? Or is it okay to not generate (or generate, but not put it in the URL right away) these IDs?

Sounds good to me. As long as we don't save the new, empty, object I can imagine using /new in URL. I assume that it's okay not to save an empty object and that ID might be generated later, when there are some data. Though I am not familiar with decisions around the current behavior and assume that it has something to do with creating new objects in IndexedDB so it would be better to check with @rtibbles in more detail.

[rtibbles]

The current behaviour of generating the UUID and using that in the URL was implemented prior to the deferred saving of new channels, so no problem in changing that. It will be easiest to still let the UUID be generated, but just use the /new in the URL as you suggest, this should not cause any issues.

[jonboiser]

In Chrome, the problem seems to be that when you refresh at a URL like
http://localhost:8080/en/channels/#/collections/8ee60d42abbd4a6a870733764ebf0d57

Which is a new, but unsaved collection, then you get an ill-formed msg object in handleFetchMessages

This results in two invalid calls:

/api/collections/api/channel
/api/channeluser?channel=collections

both returning a 404 => Error page, since it's treating the route component /collections as a channel ID.

However, if you refresh the link on a valid collection ID, you get the right msg and no problems.

I think if this behavior was fixed, it would resolve the original issue. But it also needs to be fixed just to implement a simplified client-side route like /collections/new.

[shruti862]

@bjester , I would like to work on this issue also; please assign me this issue.