Element-web: 'Files' view in e2e-encrypted rooms does not show files

[dorni1234]

Description

Uploaded files are not shown in the 'Files' view when the room has e2e enabled.

Steps to reproduce

• Enable e2e for a room, upload files, open 'Files' view.

Expected: list of uploaded files
Got: list of events when somebody changed the room image or added a widget, so only the not-encrypted events.

Log: not sent

Version information

• Platform: Desktop, riot-web version 0.12.2
• OS: Arch Linux, Kernel 4.12.8-1-vfio

[t3chguy]

the filtering is done server side and since the events are encrypted synapse has no waying of knowing which events are files.

[dorni1234]

Thank you for the information. Makes sense if you think about it...

[t3chguy]

Doesn't mean its right though, should be locally filtered for e2e

[uhoreg]

dup of #2591/#3412

[t3chguy]

Leaving this issue open as a meta until either is closed
(as a personal reminder)

[lampholder]

So #2591 is "Explain why the file list isn't working in E2E rooms" and #3412 is "Make the file list work in E2E rooms".

Neither of those captures the 'weird other events end up in the file panel' aspect :P

2591 seems like it should be easy - is the only thing blocking this our not having a design/wording?

[t3chguy]

@lampholder as far as I am aware, so if you whip up some wording/design I can impl that

[lampholder]

I was thinking something like:

For rooms which have encryption enabled:

• show all the files we can show (uploaded pre-encryption), or the 'there are no visible files' message
• show the 'files uploaded since encryption was enabled will not be displayed in this panel' message as the last item in the files panel

It's not 100% perfect, since it doesn't do anything to explain _why_ they won't be shown, but the full explanation doesn't really belong in the web UI. It might be nice to provide a why not? explanatory link, but I don't know if we have a precedent for that and how people hosting their own riots might feel about links to content hosted on https://about.riot.im

[t3chguy]

this is fiddly to implement due to how generic <TimelinePanel /> is

[lampholder]

I was afraid that might be the case. Can you suggest something that does fit within TimelinePanel that captures the same spirit?

[Thatoo]

Why is it working in Android version of Riot and not in Desktop version of Riot?
If Android can do it, why Gnu/linux can't?

[ghost]

@Thatoo

Why is it working in Android version of Riot and not in Desktop version of Riot?

Been wondering this past 6 months as well, decided to google it now with the big release of the riot version.. Thought it was my settings for a second.

The android riot does request my server for the files as it scrolls up to view old files. So obviously it just saves the chat message IDs and requests those from my server or something?

[giomfo]

@Thatoo @RRREEEEEEEE
Riot-Android and Riot-iOS list the attachments in the Files panel because they are filtering the room events locally:

• Riot-Android displays all the attachment types: file, image, video and audio (see VectorSearchRoomFilesListFragment).
• Riot-iOS displays only the attachments with a media url (see MXKRoomDataSource)

[Thatoo]

@giomfo : I assume completely if my question is naive : why Riot for desktop can't do the same?

[turt2live]

It can, but it involves a bit more work. The concern at the moment isn't really a technical one, but more of a design one.

[awesome-michael]

Any news on this? This is really annoying :/
Is there already work done? Maybe I could fix this and raise a PR. Could you give some more detail on how and where the local filtering should be done?

[t3chguy]

This could be probably linked to @poljar's local E2EE search stuff: https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/pull/11125

[jryans]

This is not actually fixed yet, we still need the Riot integration from https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk/pull/3858.