App asks to reconnect all the time.

faxotherapy commented 7 months ago

Describe the bug The apps seems to regularly forget these: domain name, username and password. This is most inconvenient when I have to re-enter the domain name, sometimes with or without the need to enter again login name and password, in the middle of doing cooking.

Is it possible to force the app to never forget these: domain name, login name and password. I'm just annoyed to often copy & paste domain name and very long password.

Also, the following shows up very regularly to the point it is very annoying. I permitted the app to connect in the past and yet, it still asks me to allow it to connect to the server. The app is completely deaf and I'm forced to adapt to its whims.

I have to input the server address countless times as it does not remeber it!

SC1_

How many times I have allowed the app to connect. The app is amnesiac, keeps asking me to allow it. Annoying.

SC2_

How many times did I grant access? Countless times! SC3_

I'd like the app to leave me in peace once I have input all the necessary info so that it can show up my receipt.

To Reproduce App version: 0.14.6

Steps to reproduce the behavior: Well, actually, it's not feasible to reproduce this issue consistently. It happened twice this morning, and I don't know the cause of this. Presumably, a “time out” issue. All I can say is just opening the app is enough to trigger the need to reconfig again and it does happen extremely often to the point I'd prefer now to use my old Word format receipt book.

I have allowed background usage for the app.

Expected behavior Ideally, I expect the app to remember everything and no longer ask me to input again, again and again the server address, the username and the password. This is truly irritating.

Smartphone:

Device: Pixel 4a (5G)
OS: Android 14
Version ? (version what? Don't understand)

Additional context It happens while making brioches.

❗ I like the app very much and got used to it very quickly. Thanks a lot to the author for this very useful app. Just too bad my user experience is very much degraded due to this kind of issue.

lneugebauer commented 6 months ago

Hi @faxotherapy, first of all, please excuse the late response!

This shouldn't happen, obviously, and the app should remember your credentials. As I don't encounter this issue, can you tell me how you are hosting your Nextcloud? Then I may be able to reproduce it.

Is it publicly available?
How do you host it? With Docker, Snap, ...?
Are you always connected to the internet when opening the app?

I'm just guessing at this point but am happy to help and figure out the issue.

faxotherapy commented 6 months ago

Hi, sorry for the late reply. Here's the context: the Nextcloud instance is hosted on a VPS and is publicly accessible. It's a snap installation. I make sure I'm always connected to Nextcloud before starting the app. However, the issue seems to have disappeared during the last three weeks. It may come back again.

faxotherapy commented 6 months ago

Again, problem persists. The app logged me out. I've got timeout error and “log in” button is frozen after re-entering credentials. Now, I simply can not log onto my account. It just worked in the morning. Something new: now it will no longer let me log in after repetively entering my credentials. If only I could put my hand on a potential log file in the app that I could send you. I'm now back to my regular EPUB cook book.

Context: while working in the kitchen, the app remains open for long long time, because need to to do return trips to and from the the cookbook. In order not to grease my phone's screen, the screen remains ON constantly and the app remains open. It seems that the app has a big issue remaining connected to the server. Is it possibe for the app to do something like an SSH connexion would do, like ServerAliveInterval? Because I can no longer use this app, otherwise. In the meantime, I gave up using this app. Can't use it anymore anyway since this app decided on a whim to no longer let me log into my server. I have no problem connecting to my server using other apps like Tasks, Nextcloud, Talk, etc. From the Nextcloud ecosystem apps, Cookbook is the only that is problematic: losing server connexion and asking me to repetively connect. I'm exhausted.

Also, overzealous security warnings degrade user experience. It's painful to connect to the server from this app: “Are you very sure about this?, do you grand that too”, etc. First time asking those pesky questions, I'd understand, but repeatitively asking those questions every time we attempt—because even though good credentials, it leads to failures: we need to try a handful of times in order to make a successful connection after it lost the server—to connect the server, like never remembering I told the app “it's OK, you can do it, it's safe”, I can't bear it anymore.

The app in itself is great! It's the connectivity issue that is a nightmare with this app.

See other usage context from my previous message.

Thank you

Note: I'm a regular user, not a dev. I'm aware the app is maintained by a generous developper over his free time and I do NOT blame him whatsoever for his/her time. I'm, in fact, grateful for his hard work. However, my message is based on my user experience, and I'm NOT asking for the dev to sacrifice even more of his/her free time to fix this. It's just a user feedback. I simply can no longer use it my case. I can't contribue either, because I'm not a dev.

jessebot commented 5 months ago

I may have a bit more data here to help troubleshoot edge cases where this happens. This is just some friendly feedback. I can still use the app, but I can also understand how others might get confused or frustrated here. I'm not either of those emotions though :) I'm grateful for the labor you and your community put into this 🙏

Description of scenario in which disconnects happen

My app seems to disconnect once a day, and then it takes me logging back in 2 or 3 times before it stays logged in for the day (the one or two times I try to log in, I get the same timeout/no recipes found issue described in https://github.com/lneugebauer/nextcloud-cookbook/issues/76, but then the second or third time it works fine).

I think this may be because my server goes into maintenance mode every night at midnight. I came to this conclusion, because If I stay up too late, and I'm actively entering in a recipe, the app disconnects, which kind of makes sense as the server is in maintenance mode. I personally noticed it disconnected every morning, because I can never remember the ratios for a chia seed pudding I make in the mornings, so I try to open up the app in the morning, and then have to do the login dance. I only put two and two together last night because I was up too late.

What might be expected instead

I would expect the existing recipes to still be available, and the app to have a small banner at the top that says "Server is in maintenance mode" as that's what the Nextcloud app does. This shouldn't mean disconnecting entirely from the session, otherwise the user needs to sign back in every day if they have a cronjob for maintenance mode to run nightly. Since I have the Nextcloud app and it syncs all my recipes locally, I would expect to still be able to view all my recipes locally through the cookbook app - but not download any new recipes -, but in maintenance mode, I cannot even view existing recipes, as it disconnects, and I can't reconnect to the server while it's in maintenance mode, which in my case, is a four hour window (recommended by Nextcloud).

Per dev docs:

If Nextcloud is down for maintenance, it sends a HTTP response with status code 503 and the header: x-nextcloud-maintenance-mode: 1

So perhaps you could check for that response?

I'd normally expect to only need to re-login if:

My credentials have changed
The upstream Nextcloud server was wiped, resulting in losing my session tokens
I cleared the app cache/data
I configured a setting to reprompt for credentials after a configurable amount of time - some security nerds might want this :)

My env

parameter	version
Device	Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G (One UI version 6.1)
OS	Android 14
Cookbook Version	`0.16.0 (38)`, from the Google Play Store, though technically through aurora store

I also want to note, another person in my household also uses this app and they never had the initial issue I pointed out in #76, however, they are also signed out every morning when they check the app, after the server has been in maintenance mode. They have the same env as me, except they have a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra 5G.

xmgz commented 2 months ago

I have a device that disconnects cookbook app too, but it does not happen in other. Why? I dont know.

Same nextcloud user and app version. May be WebView related? Diference between login with user credentials and per-app token?

xmgz commented 1 month ago

I would add some context after several weeks using this app.

I've notice that disconnection happens when using wifi at home, and I think it is because my problems with local network harpenning (local dns resolution), I can not edit /etc/hosts in my android device. When using mobile data network it does not disconnect (ask for login credentials every time I open the app).

I'm not sure if this network issue I personally have may be the root cause of this issue, but never happened when using mobile data.

Harpenning would be tedious to fix for this device so I'm not wasting my time anymore.

Anyone has notice this correlation?

When login using QR arrives to this app (or through NC files app) then it will be way faster to reconnect :sweat_smile:

thank you

lneugebauer commented 1 month ago

I've notice that disconnection happens when using wifi at home, and I think it is because my problems with local network harpenning (local dns resolution), I can not edit /etc/hosts in my android device. When using mobile data network it does not disconnect (ask for login credentials every time I open the app).

I'm not sure if this network issue I personally have may be the root cause of this issue, but never happened when using mobile data.

This could be the source for your logout issue. I may be able to take a look at this next week and try to improve the reconnect behaviour of the app.

I think this may be because my server goes into maintenance mode every night at midnight. I came to this conclusion, because If I stay up too late, and I'm actively entering in a recipe, the app disconnects, which kind of makes sense as the server is in maintenance mode.

The above mentioned improvement should also fix this disconnect issue.

lneugebauer / nextcloud-cookbook