Altair: All data cleared after upgrade to 2.3.5 (Electron build)

[levrik]

Describe the bug

After upgrading to 2.3.5 all data was cleared. My collections, open tabs and settings are lost.
That's a quite serious issue since I now have to manually restore everything which will cost me probably a full day of work.

[imolorhe]

Can you downgrade back to 2.3.4 and see if the data is restored? Also is this the first time this happened?

[imolorhe]

There was a change in 2.3.5 that caused this to happen. Would fix in 2.3.6 but for now downgrading should work

[levrik]

Yep. This is the first time this is happening. I'll try downgrading.

[levrik]

Downgrading worked 🎉

[imolorhe]

Good to hear. Gives me more confidence on what the problem is.

[ieugen]

I've also encountered this. I've downgraded but every time I start altair just downloads and installs the new version. This is a bit frustrating.

This update feature might be nice but personally I don't like it because of issues like the one in this issue. I believe such auto update should happen with user consent.

The fact that an app downloads stuff of off the internet and installs it is trouble waiting to happen IMO.

It even removed the old binary... Please reconsider this feature and turn it off by default. Allow user to enable it.

My 2 cents, anyway.

[imolorhe]

@ieugen you can create that as a separate issues if you want

[imolorhe]

v2.3.6 has been released and it fixes the changes in 2.3.5.

[levrik]

@imolorhe All data is still lost, even on 2.3.7
I downgraded to 2.3.4 again but it always automatically installs 2.3.7 again.
This issue has to be fixed now! I can't do my work.

[imolorhe]

@levrik You can get the binary without installing it. Does it still forcefully update? The binaries for 2.3.4 can be found here: https://github.com/imolorhe/altair/releases/tag/v2.3.4

GitHub

imolorhe/altair

✨⚡️ A beautiful feature-rich GraphQL Client for all platforms. - imolorhe/altair

[imolorhe]

@levrik First, I'm sorry for the issues with your data. If the data isn't restored in v2.3.7, can you try what was suggested here if it works for you: https://github.com/imolorhe/altair/issues/968#issuecomment-541898903 if it's related. You can check the stored data in /Users/<your_username>/Library/Application Support and check for the directories related to Altair. There is a possibility that the directory used in some version of Altair is different from the directory used in the other version. If that's the case, renaming the directory here should fix the issue for you. Please let me know if this works for you

[levrik]

@imolorhe

There are three folders in total.
I think the altair one is the one from v2.3.7. Couldn't altair check for these folders at startup and migrate data over if they exist? That's a really bad user experience to don't migrate data if the storage is getting changed.

[imolorhe]

I'll consider that. Just need to understand the changes first but did this work for you?

[levrik]

@imolorhe

$ mv ~/Library/Application\ Support/altair ~/Library/Application\ Support/altair-bkp
$ mv ~/Library/Application\ Support/Altair\ GraphQL\ Client ~/Library/Application\ Support/altair

worked for me.

[imolorhe]

Thanks. That's useful information. I believe what happened was e the newer version of electron started using the different name (Altair) to store the data. Don't know why but I'll figure it out 🙂

[levrik]

@imolorhe Probably you didn't use a static name for creating the binary and name is used for storing data. I think normally the folder name of the project is used and since you moved the code of the Electron version a bit around, it got a different name each time.

[imolorhe]

@levrik There was a missing productName field which caused the change in storage location. I've now fixed that but that would mean the data would be "lost" again. However, I've also added functionality to help migrate the lost data easily so it shouldn't really break your flow. 🙂 Just an FYI.