[AI Help] Question: Is there a solution that works in Chrome and Edge?

What is the issue with the answer?

I was searching for client-side JavaScript that will clear site data in Chrome and Edge (I already have a solution for FireFox) and it recommended calling navigator.clearSiteData(), but this function simply doesn't exist.

How would you categorize this issue?

[ ] The answer is harmful / unsafe.
[X] The answer is not correct.
[ ] The answer is not helpful.
[ ] The answer is outdated.

What did you ask?

How can I clear site data using JavaScript? For example, if I'm on example.com, what function will clear all site data for example.com?
How can I clear site data using client-side JavaScript?
Is there a solution that works in Chrome and Edge?

What did AI Help answer?

Yes, there is a solution that works in Chrome and Edge. Both browsers provide the clearSiteData() function, which can be used to clear site data.

Here is an example of how you can use the clearSiteData() function to clear site data for a specific origin, such as example.com:

if (navigator.clearSiteData) {
  navigator.clearSiteData({ origins: ['https://example.com'] })
    .then(() => {
      console.log('Site data cleared successfully');
    })
    .catch((error) => {
      console.error('Failed to clear site data:', error);
    });
} else {
  console.warn('clearSiteData() is not supported in this browser');
}

In the above code, we first check if the clearSiteData() function is available in the navigator object. If it is, we call the function and pass an array of origins to clear the site data for. In this case, we specify https://example.com as the origin.

If the clearSiteData() function is not supported in the browser, a warning message is logged to the console.

Please note that the clearSiteData() function requires the user's permission to clear site data, and it may not clear all types of site data depending on the browser's implementation.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any further questions.

What MDN pages did AI Help consult?

Hi @higbyk, thanks for submitting this issue, this is an interesting one - and I see a few issues here.

it recommended calling navigator.clearSiteData(), but this function simply doesn't exist.

First off, it's a clear bug that the LLM hallucinated a function here. While I'll go into how I think your questions contributed to it a bit later on, they clearly weren't designed to break the model, so the fact a hallucination occurred here is something we should attempt to fix.

I was searching for client-side JavaScript that will clear site data in Chrome and Edge (I already have a solution for FireFox)

I'm super intrigued though, because I can't think of an API for clearing site data in Firefox which doesn't exist in Chromium. What approach are you taking in Firefox, because it doesn't seem like AI Help even returned a solution which would work in Firefox alone.

Going through the questions you asked AI Help one-by-one:

How can I clear site data using JavaScript? For example, if I'm on example.com, what function will clear all site data for example.com?

The response I get is:

To clear site data using JavaScript for a specific domain like example.com, you can make use of the Clear-Site-Data header in an HTTP response. By sending this header with the appropriate values, you can clear different types of data such as cache, cookies, storage, and execution contexts.

To clear all site data for example.com, you can send an HTTP response with the Clear-Site-Data header set to "cache", "cookies", "storage", "executionContexts". Here's an example of how you can do this:
fetch('https://example.com/logout', {
  headers: {
    'Clear-Site-Data': '"cache", "cookies", "storage", "executionContexts"'
  }
});
In the above code snippet, we are using the fetch function to send an HTTP request to https://example.com/logout and including the Clear-Site-Data header with the desired values. This will clear the cache, cookies, storage, and execution contexts for the example.com domain.

Please note that this approach requires server-side implementation to send the appropriate response with the Clear-Site-Data header.

So we've already started on a poor footing, saying to clear site data using JavaScript, you can make use of the Clear-Site-Data header - I suppose, strictly, this is true, as you could set it server side using something like nodejs, but that's not what's expected. It then gives a reasonable explanation of the header, but then unfortunately gives a completely nonsense code example - you can't set a response header in a request.

But it does point out that this approach requires a server-side implementation, which is presumably what prompted your follow up question, specifically mentioning client-side JS:

How can I clear site data using client-side JavaScript?

Where the response I get is:

To clear site data using client-side JavaScript, you can use the browsingData API. This API allows you to remove various types of browsing data, including cookies, cache, local storage, and more.

To clear all site data for a specific domain, such as example.com, you can use the browsingData.remove() function with the appropriate options. However, please note that the option to remove data only from normal web pages is not yet supported in Firefox.

Here is an example of how you can use the browsingData.remove() function to clear site data for example.com:
const removeOptions = {
  originTypes: {
    protectedWeb: true,
    unprotectedWeb: true
  }
};

const removeData = {
  origins: ["https://example.com"]
};

browser.browsingData.remove(removeData, removeOptions)
  .then(() => {
    console.log("Site data cleared successfully.");
  })
  .catch((error) => {
    console.error("Failed to clear site data:", error);
  });
In the above example, we specify the originTypes as both protected and unprotected web pages to ensure that data is removed from all types of pages. Then, we provide the origins array with the domain https://example.com to specify the site for which we want to clear the data.

Please note that this example uses the browser object, which is specific to the WebExtensions API used in Firefox. If you are using a different browser or a different API, you may need to adjust the code accordingly.

Remember to handle any errors that may occur during the data clearing process.

First of all, this obviously isn't a good answer, because it's a WebExtension API - which isn't what we'd think of as "client side" JavaScript. The example is also a bit odd as it seems to integrate some aspects of Chromium's browsingData.remove method.

So, by the time we get to the third response, where the clearSiteData() function gets hallucinated, we've already strayed quite far off the path of a solution.

So a few things happened here:

The context we provided the LLM in all cases was bad or had limitations:
- In the first case, it was relevant to part of the question "clear site data", but not the other part "using JavaScript". One way we may be able to improve this is by using more metadata in our similarity search: currently we just find the closest matching section regardless of where it exists on the site: in this case we should've perhaps limited the search to just the JavaScript section
- Pretty much the same problem happens in the second case, we found a WebExtensions article, not a JavaScript one
- And in the third case, because we do a similarity search only on the question itself, rather than in the context of all the questions asked so far, we found some entirely un-relevant articles
We simply don't support browser-compatibility related queries at the moment: that data isn't fed into the LLM at any point - until we support that, we should perhaps "push back" and reply saying something like "I can't help with that yet"
We were already quite "confused" by the third question, and we might need to implement some kind of guard where at a certain point (and this could be calculated a few ways, potentially by the semantic similarity distance between question and content getting wider and wider) we give up and prompt a user to start again, or ask the question in our Discord or something
This is also a bit of a worst case situation for the model, in that there isn't really a straightforward solution: the straightforward one is the server-side one, the only way I can think of doing this client side is going through each storage API (cookies, localStorage, etc.) one-by-one and clearing them (though that doesn't clear history and cache etc.)
- These kinds of cases don't seem to perform very well in our current setup, but there's a lot we can do to attempt to optimise them

Thanks so much for reporting this one, it's going to be a very good test-case going forward as we make changes to our implementation!

@higbyk Thanks again for reporting this issue. 👍

As we're working on an iteration, I would like to share with you what AI Help 2.0 might answer.

Can you please check how the following answers perform with regard to the issue you reported above? 🙏

How can I clear site data using JavaScript? For example, if I'm on example.com, what function will clear all site data for example.com?

To clear site data for a specific origin (like example.com) using JavaScript, you can utilize the Clear-Site-Data HTTP response header. However, this header can only be set by the server when it sends a response to the client. It is not possible to set this header directly from client-side JavaScript running in the browser due to security restrictions.

If you have control over the server, you can configure it to send the Clear-Site-Data header in a response to a client request. The header can instruct the browser to clear various types of data, such as cookies, storage, and cache. Here's an example of how the header might look:
Clear-Site-Data: "cache", "cookies", "storage", "executionContexts"
If you want to clear specific data from the client side, you can use JavaScript APIs to clear data stored by various web storage technologies. Here are some examples:

Cookies: Use document.cookie to manipulate cookies.

Local Storage: Use localStorage.clear() to clear all local storage data.

Session Storage: Use sessionStorage.clear() to clear all session storage data.

IndexedDB: Use the IndexedDB API to delete databases or clear object stores.

Here's an example of how you might clear local storage and session storage for the current origin:
// Clear local storage
localStorage.clear();

// Clear session storage
sessionStorage.clear();
To clear cookies for the current origin, you would iterate over the cookies and delete them one by one:
// Clear cookies
document.cookie.split(";").forEach(function(c) {
  document.cookie = c.trim().split("=")[0] + "=;expires=Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 UTC; path=/";
});
For IndexedDB, you would need to open each database and delete it:
// Example: Delete an IndexedDB database
const dbName = "example_database";

const request = indexedDB.deleteDatabase(dbName);

request.onerror = function(event) {
  console.error("Error deleting database.");
};

request.onsuccess = function(event) {
  console.log("Database deleted successfully");
};
Remember that these operations will only affect data stored by the current origin in the client's browser. They won't clear server-side data or data stored by other origins. Additionally, you should use these operations with caution, as they can disrupt the user experience if not handled properly.

How can I clear site data using client-side JavaScript?

To clear site data using client-side JavaScript, you can use the Web Storage API to clear data stored in localStorage and sessionStorage. Here's how you can do it:
Clearing localStorage: To clear all data stored in localStorage, you can use the clear() method:
localStorage.clear();
This will remove all key-value pairs from localStorage for the current origin.
Clearing sessionStorage: Similarly, to clear all data stored in sessionStorage, you can use the clear() method:
sessionStorage.clear();
This will remove all key-value pairs from sessionStorage for the current session.
Please note that this will only clear data stored through the Web Storage API (localStorage and sessionStorage). It will not clear other types of data such as cookies, cached files, or data stored by other APIs like IndexedDB or the Cache API.

To clear cookies, you would need to use the document.cookie property to manipulate cookies associated with the current page. Here's an example of how to delete a cookie by setting its expiration date to the past:
document.cookie = "username=; expires=Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT; path=/";
For other types of data, such as cached files or IndexedDB, there is no direct way to clear them using client-side JavaScript due to security and privacy concerns. Users typically need to clear such data manually through their browser settings, or you can prompt users to clear site data using the Clear-Site-Data HTTP header, which can only be set by the server.

For more information on using the Web Storage API, you can refer to the MDN documentation on Using the Web Storage API.

Is there a solution that works in Chrome and Edge?

(When asked as a follow-up question to the previous question)

To clear site data using client-side JavaScript, you can use the window.localStorage and window.sessionStorage APIs to clear data stored in the respective storage areas. Here's how you can clear data for both storage types:
// Clear localStorage data
localStorage.clear();

// Clear sessionStorage data
sessionStorage.clear();
However, this will only clear data stored in localStorage and sessionStorage. It does not clear cookies or other forms of site data such as IndexedDB or Cache API data. To clear cookies, you can use the document.cookie API:
// Clear all cookies for the current domain
var cookies = document.cookie.split(";");

for (var i = 0; i < cookies.length; i++) {
    var cookie = cookies[i];
    var eqPos = cookie.indexOf("=");
    var name = eqPos > -1 ? cookie.substr(0, eqPos) : cookie;
    document.cookie = name + "=;expires=Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT; path=/";
}
For other forms of site data like IndexedDB or Cache API, you would need to use their respective APIs to clear the data:

IndexedDB

Cache API

Please note that you cannot clear all site data (like cache or indexedDB) from all domains due to security restrictions. The JavaScript code can only clear data that was set by the same domain (same-origin policy).

The methods described above work in both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, as well as other modern browsers that support these APIs. Always check the compatibility tables on MDN or use feature detection to ensure that the APIs you are using are supported by the browsers where your script will run.

mdn / ai-feedback