Physical Web Service totally unstable - fails to validate URLs and show notifications

[LOC-Place]

Nearby does filter some page content if it gets swiped away too many times. You may have ran into this. Please also try the URL validator: https://beaufortfrancois.github.io/sandbox/physical-web/url-validator/

Validator requests Fails and Success within minutes 1st request https://www.loc-place.com/

2nd a view minutes later

@mmocny The same on the devices Android and iOS With iOS Chrome still not working - since more than 12hours - Compare my former issue from today, which has been closed to fast

Thank you so much for further details what's going on and when the service is really stable again.

[LOC-Place]

The PWS did work - stoped working - intermittently service this whole afternoon

17:11 CET long time after closing the former issue form today monday 8th

18:11

Do you have any explanations for this - we do have productive use-case with real customers out in the field!

[LOC-Place]

Due to the fact, that the pysical web APP did work the whole time - it seems to be a PWServer Error/Bug again After a short successful restart time the service failed again at least two times this afternoon. To all - try the URL validator first if anything doesn't work as expected: https://beaufortfrancois.github.io/sandbox/physical-web/url-validator/

[luciofr]

Even with the validated URL I do not get notifications, Nearby Android, Physical Web and iOS via Chrome notifications.

[jeffprestes]

@luciofr when have you set this link in your Beacon? For my customers, before I deliver to them, I set the link at least 8 hours in advance. I am in Brazil (São Paulo) and my customer is not facing any issues. It's working also in Samsung Closed By

[LOC-Place]

@jeffprestes I do see also some ongoing problems - validated on of the above mentioned URLs POSITIVE again: http://tiny.cc/qujgby Showed me that everything should be OK but DON'T get the nearby notification As you can see in the screenshot - one of the two URL is missing again!?

[LOC-Place]

@mmocny - please can you support us. Thank you so much

[luciofr]

@jeffprestes, my URLs are dynamic, even if there is any delay because of proxy cash, we have standard content that was always displayed, at least until the beginning of May / 2017 when the native Android neighbor started to no longer show and To my surprise the Physical Web application and iOS via Chrome notifications also stopped as of May 4. All the URLs are validated, apart from several Clients that have opened calls indicating the error in our support, we have tests being performed on Androids and iOS devices, WiFi and 4G.

[LOC-Place]

and a view minutes later, the 2nd nearby URL is back again...???

[LOC-Place]

again - NONE of the the two URLs-Notifications are found/displayed under Chrome iOS

[LOC-Place]

and a view minutes later - back again...

[LOC-Place]

the same unstable show/no-show of nearby notifications on Android Notification Center / Chrome and Chrome Beta (Omnibox)

again just 1 out of 2 notification URL

[luciofr]

I just received via iOS, now via Physical Web or Android Nearby nothing done.

[ferencbrachmann]

All is stable on our devices.

[mmocny]

Wow, this was a lot of messages in a short duration.

Can we first clarify a few naming things to make sure there is less confusion:

1. Notifications: Only available on Android and only via Nearby. There is no such thing as a Chrome Notification (any more, we used to do them on Android only).

2. TodayView widget: Only available on iOS, via Chrome or the Physical Web standalone app. The standalone app uses an older version.

3. Nearby App (list view): Only available on Android, shows results even if Notifications aren't fired.

For all 3 of these, the phone has to actually find the Bluetooth beacon, which isn't always perfect. Then the phone has to call PWS to resolve the metadata, this isn't always perfect.

For most clients, Android or iOS, they cache PWS metadata. So if you are having trouble finding a result, it may be PWS -- but if you are seeing it found-lost-found, this is likely just bluetooth issues.

[luciofr]

Hi @mmocny, I will focus on the Android Nearby because via TodayView widget iOS is quite rare to fail. Regarding Android's Nearby, I notice a very large intermittence, instead of failing a few times it works a few times, mainly with versions 5.xx and 6.0.1 of Android, the same devices via Physical Web Application always present the links, however , Since the 04 / May I have been noticing this intermittency also via TodayView widget iOS and App Physical Web. Regarding the PWS cache, any procedure to clean? All the devices that I use for the checks, have Internet access, Location and Bluetooth active.

[LOC-Place]

Again the PWS fails to validate both of the above mentioned tiny.cc URLs

[LOC-Place]

@mmocny thank you for your feedback - due to the fact, that the physical web APP shows the beacon with the todays view PW APP widget it CAN'T be bluetooth issues. The secound hit that there are problems witht the PWS ist that thee validation through https://beaufortfrancois.github.io/sandbox/physical-web/url-validator/ fails. Any idea why I do face these problems - could it by tiny.cc which is a recommended shortener service on the PW-Web pages?

[LOC-Place]

@mmocny What is the exact reason for the error message: Deadline Exceeded (Fetch timeout). ? I tested the service with about 10 tiny.cc URLs which all redirect to https: URLs Non of them have been validated positive - when I check the "full direct https URL", they are validated positive through the PWS - seems to be problem with the redirect from non https tiny URLs

[LOC-Place]

@mmocny Actually its working on Android and the PWS Validation also works Still not working on iOS Chrome today view

[mmocny]

I just tried that URL and it took me >5s to fetch it the first time. If your server is slow to respond, PWS will give up resolving it in the synchronous path. PWS will try indexing again some short time later, and add it to our cache for next time. However, your specific page also has no Cache-Control headers, which default to "private", meaning PWS tries not to cache it for very long (today this means less than an hour or so).

I think that you should: (a) Do some performance analysis on your server (b) Set a Cache-Control header in your web-server to at least 24hours, giving us time to update while using the old cached version.

Whenever you refresh the Nearby app manually, it will clear its cache, and re-fetch from PWS. If you are getting Fetch-failures every hour or so, the above advice will help.

If you are getting errors more than every hour, I will dig to see why we are failing to resolve.

Cheers.

[mmocny]

@luciofr may you open a new bug about the Nearby issue? Specifically I'll get someone from the Nearby team to help you debug. If the Nearby app won't show results when you manually refresh the page, then we are interested to get debug info from your device.

[mmocny]

@LOC-Place Looking at some logs, we used to resolve your URLs fine most of the time, and very recently started failing ~50% of the time (depending on the day).

I'm sure some of the numbers come from you spamming refresh :P but seems something has changed. I'll dig on our end, but curious if you made any changes recently?

[mmocny]

Indeed if I try to resolve your domain directly, without going through tiny.cc, it does index fine. This seems to indicate it is unrelated to your webserver, and so likely on our end or due to tiny.cc. Seems like a legitimate issue, so thanks for bringing it to my attention. (For the record, it would have been easier to find if you had sent fewer, less hostile messages)

[LOC-Place]

@mmocny Thank you very much for your detailed evaluation, feedback and suggestions about the potential reasons of the issues, we are facing. My personal opinion about is, that there is a problem with the redirection of the tiny.cc URLs.

[LOC-Place]

@mmocny no we didn't change anything on our side - and to ensure that there are no issue with our site, we have several other sites in our test-environment too - also some public services like facebook, xing (German LinkedIn) and others. We do see the same behavior with all kind of domains.

[aramkris]

@mmocny I also have the same problem that @luciofr has mentioned about Nearby App not getting any results when refreshed, while the PW app shows the beacons. Do let me know if you would like to see more logs for analysis.

[mmocny]

We are seeing increased timeouts with tiny.cc (due to host overloading) and are still working on ways to resolve/mitigate the issues. It's not necessarily exclusively affecting tiny.cc, but that's the one that is most clearly common.

@aramkris If you are having issues with Nearby showing results, that is a common symptom for many issues, and is unlikely related to this bug. I think there is another github issue tracking Nearby-not-showing-after-refresh, please do add more context there.