News: Cannot mark feeds as read anymore

[asmw]

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Explain the Problem

If I mark a feed as read it re-appears as completely unread, I guess after the next update cycle.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Open news app
2. Mark some messages or a whole feed as read
3. Wait
4. Messages/feeds re-appear as unread

System Information

• News app version: 1.5.2.2
• Nextcloud version: 20.0.6 snap
• Cron type: I think the snap uses system cron?
• PHP version: 7.4.14
• Database and version: mysql 5.7.33
• Browser and version: Firefox 85 on Linux
• OS and version: Ubuntu 18.04 + 20.10

Contents of nextcloud/data/nextcloud.log

{"reqId":"J09ONuvgHf4OEdIqT17c","level":0,"time":"2021-02-03T15:28:59+00:00","remoteAddr":"","user":"--","app":"news","method":"","url":"--","message":"start reading http://mycroft.ai/feed/","userAgent":"--","version":"20.0.6.1"}
{"reqId":"J09ONuvgHf4OEdIqT17c","level":1,"time":"2021-02-03T15:28:59+00:00","remoteAddr":"","user":"--","app":"news","method":"","url":"--","message":"no 'modifiedSince' parameter given, setting it to 01/01/1970","userAgent":"--","version":"20.0.6.1"}
{"reqId":"J09ONuvgHf4OEdIqT17c","level":1,"time":"2021-02-03T15:28:59+00:00","remoteAddr":"","user":"--","app":"news","method":"","url":"--","message":"hitting http://mycroft.ai/feed/","userAgent":"--","version":"20.0.6.1"}
{"reqId":"J09ONuvgHf4OEdIqT17c","level":0,"time":"2021-02-03T15:29:00+00:00","remoteAddr":"","user":"--","app":"news","method":"","url":"--","message":"response ok, now turning it into a document","userAgent":"--","version":"20.0.6.1"}
{"reqId":"J09ONuvgHf4OEdIqT17c","level":1,"time":"2021-02-03T15:29:00+00:00","remoteAddr":"","user":"--","app":"news","method":"","url":"--","message":"the stream is modified, parsing it","userAgent":"--","version":"20.0.6.1"}
{"reqId":"J09ONuvgHf4OEdIqT17c","level":0,"time":"2021-02-03T15:29:00+00:00","remoteAddr":"","user":"--","app":"news","method":"","url":"--","message":"accurate parser : FeedIo\\Parser\\XmlParser","userAgent":"--","version":"20.0.6.1"}
{"reqId":"J09ONuvgHf4OEdIqT17c","level":1,"time":"2021-02-03T15:29:00+00:00","remoteAddr":"","user":"--","app":"news","method":"","url":"--","message":"correct public id for node Mycroft","userAgent":"--","version":"20.0.6.1"}
{"reqId":"J09ONuvgHf4OEdIqT17c","level":0,"time":"2021-02-03T15:29:00+00:00","remoteAddr":"","user":"--","app":"news","method":"","url":"--","message":"Feed http://mycroft.ai/feed/ was modified since last fetch. #6 items","userAgent":"--","version":"20.0.6.1"}

Contents of Browser Error Console

Read http://ggnome.com/wiki/Using_The_Browser_Error_Console if you are unsure what to put here

No errors in browser log

[asmw]

I think the snap updated to nextcloud 20.0.6 the night before this behaviour started and the news app version 15.2.2 is also very new. I don't recall updating it manually though.

[stenwt]

I'm seeing this since updating to 1.5.2.2 as well. I'm using nextcloud-news-updater, seems somewhat random which items get re-added as new.

[SMillerDev]

It seems the sorting for the item purging is done on a field that is always NULL (yay legacy cruft) so it removes random items only to re-import them later. We'll release a fix when someone has time to make a PR.

[asmw]

@SMillerDev yay indeed :)

Thanks for the quick response.

[nille02]

Same here on a manual installation. Is there a workaround?

Ubuntu20.04 LTS
Nextcloud 20.0.7
PHP 7.4.3
mysql 8.0.23
News 15.2.2 ( Updated from 15.1.0 )

Is it save to downgrade or did the upgrade modify the database tables?

[SMillerDev]

Is it save to downgrade or did the upgrade modify the database tables?

No changes that make it incompatible with earlier versions.

[nille02]

Thank you, unfortunately nextcloud upgrade it immediately back to the broken version :/

EDIT: Not replacing the appinfo folder was the trick.

[kitzler-walli]

Is it save to downgrade or did the upgrade modify the database tables?

@nille02 How can I downgrade an app?

[anoymouserver]

To avoid this, you could also disable the item purging in your admin settings by setting it to -1 until an update is released.

(defaults to 200)

[kitzler-walli]

I just changed the orderby query to "last_modified" but that does not fix the issue.

[nille02]

Is it save to downgrade or did the upgrade modify the database tables?

@nille02 How can I downgrade an app?

I've downloaded the news Version 15.1.1 from the Release Page and replaced the Files in nextcloud/apps/news with the older files, except the appinfo folder. Nextcloud see it still as 15.2 but its 15.1.1 now.

But if anoymouservers workaround works, then i would suggest that.

[asmw]

For completeness sake: the workaround @anoymouserver proposed did not work for me.

Let's see if 15.2.3 does the trick.

[anoymouserver]

Interesting, I am running it myself on my instance and have not had any items that were refetched since then. I had to clean up the old ones manually, of course.

v15.2.3 will basically contain only this.

[asmw]

@anoymouserver what do you mean by 'clean up manually'? I disabled 'Maximum read count per feed' and marked all feeds as read.
I can also run SQL queries if required, I just don't want to poke files in the snap directories manually if I can avoid it.

[anoymouserver]

Cleaning up by marking the refetched ones as read again.
I'm using 'Maximum read count per feed' with a value of 150 currently and haven't had any refetched items with my patch.

[noci2012]

What is the time between release here and in the nextcloud app store?

[SMillerDev]

It's pretty instant after a release gets tagged here.

[noci2012]

hm tagged 6 hours ago, there is still no 15.2.3 available in the store.
nm. The fix doesn't build yet. Maybe it is a bit premature to declare this issue fixed...

[SMillerDev]

It wasn't tagged, there's a pull request to release it.

[asmw]

@anoymouserver I have the feeling some feeds bahave OK with the setting changed and other feeds have all available articles as unread again _IF_ there is also a new one.

[anoymouserver]

Could you please provide the feeds url for me to verify this? I had it for 6 feeds which now behave as expected.

[kitzler-walli]

Heise News Feed for example - I'm receiving at least 45 items every hour
https://www.heise.de/rss/heise-atom.xml

[anoymouserver]

Heise News Feed for example - I'm receiving at least 45 items every hour
https://www.heise.de/rss/heise-atom.xml

Can't confirm for this exact feed, I've have it already subscribed and it was refetched again and again until I've changed to last_modified. I suggest you to disable the purging (https://github.com/nextcloud/news/issues/1122#issuecomment-773109185) and check again when the new version was released.

[asmw]

@kitzler-walli heise works for me

I had issues with e.g. https://blog.fefe.de/rss.xml.

Weird behaviour.

The latest feed update cycle has not reanimated any dead posts and properly presents some new articles.

[matzex]

I manually applied the fix from the pull request/commit to my installation of the app in version 15.2.2 but still have issues with feeds where the entire feed is marked as new items after every fetch. Example: Chaosradio

[kitzler-walli]

Probably someone could push 15.2.1 as a new release until this is fixed?

[anoymouserver]

Can't confirm for this exact feed, I've have it already subscribed and it was refetched again and again until I've changed to last_modified. I suggest you to disable the purging (#1122 (comment)) and check again when the new version was released.

Also can't confirm for Chaosradio here.

---

Please stop suggesting new feeds which supposedly are refetched after manually applying the fix. This leads nowhere, as it has not been possible to recreate it so far.
I suggest to disable the purging (https://github.com/nextcloud/news/issues/1122#issuecomment-773109185) for now and check again when the new version was released.
If the issue still occures then, we will investigate it again.

[Grotax]

15.3.1 got released and you should be able to update and test it :) https://github.com/nextcloud/news/discussions/1140