Flyspray - The bug killer!

this one is somehow tricky, it doesn't happens always but sometimes when fields or filenames contain national characters (I'm in Spain) flyspray returns an error looking like this one:

Query {INSERT INTO `flyspray_attachments` ( task_id, comment_id, file_name, file_type, file_size, orig_name, added_by, date_added) VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?)} with params {189,711,189_9c5d837bb10b7e0989a3c8be8d,application/pdf; charset=binary,736986,Guia de aplicación medidas difusicón y publicidad.pdf,4,1441827828} Failed! (Incorrect string value: '\xCC\x81n me...' for column 'orig_name' at row 1)

here we have a pdf named "Guia de aplicación medidas difusicón y publicidad.pdf" but I had this error also with titles or descriptions containing spanish letters...

“Markdown is a lightweight markup language with plain text formatting syntax designed so that it can be converted to HTML and many other formats using a tool by the same name.[6][7] Markdown is often used to format readme files, for writing messages in online discussion forums, and to create rich text using a plain text editor.” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown

With the existence of now two peoples named “Peter” on bugs.flyspray.org (I - peterdd , and PeterTheOne)
there are several places where the full names are display instead of usernames and the user can’t know who is which “Peter” until he visits the users profile page.

Different solutions possible:

• more profile image/gravatar usage where user names are shown, on mouseover link title attribute shows username and realname
• display user name (username) instead of full name (realname)
• display full name and username (where much space available and precision needed)
• …

When adding the mention feature, the username will be probably the prefered setting as the username is unique but the realname not.

Currently the task list columns are used, which are choosed by admin or project manager for the task list view.

Just moved issue #110 from https://github.com/Flyspray/flyspray/issues/110 to here for centralized task tracking.

Maybe just needs testing with current github master.

On some forms, when the user presses the reload button of this browser, the POST submit can be resubmitted.

Browsers can warn about this (Chromium, Firefox, Konqueror tested and they show a warning dialog) before executing the second POST.
But people on Flyspray mailing list wrote they experienced double comments.

Simple solution is just HTTP GET redirects after a successful POST. (HTTP 303 or HTTP 302)
But maybe there is a better method than a second roundtrip always needed?

Success, Error, or Warn-messages to the user are stored in the $_SESSION variable for displaying on the second GET request.
But I think that this is a bit ... mmh... not perfect.

For example, I would like to have in the direct response at which position in a form an input error is, not just the message bar in the top center as it is currently that just dissappear after a few seconds.

Also take care the browser back button still works as expected for the user.

As discussed with the team some time ago, a consolidation of places where issues are discussed is wanted.

One of the results was, that we do not want people post issues to github.com Issues and instead use our own bugs.flyspray.org
and to prefer "to eat our own dogfood" and a have central place to handle tasks.

As a result we tried to reduce the open issueas on github.com. I was in the process of moving 2 of still 7 open issues there to bugs.flyspray.org when suddenly the Issues on github.com were closed. Now the last 5 issues there are lost at the moment for me and the audience, which where mostly informations to interested users, not bugs.

I think just closing it without an easy accessible alternative is not the best solution.

At least we should wait until the oauth2 authentication for github users should be implemented and setup on bugs.flyspray.org , so people browsing github.com, finding Flyspray project just can
"Login with github"-feature on bugs.flyspray.org.

The blocker to do this: Currently there is missing an option to "connect" an oauth "Login with github"- Login with an existend flyspray userlogin.

So that one userid in flyspray can:

• login with username and password
• login with one or more of his social accounts (github, facebook, microsoft, g+) if they are enabled (would it restrict to github.com accounts for bugs.flyspray.org)

We have no API yet for Flyspray.

But someone could write a simple php-file that can be called by a github.com auto notification, whenever:

• a commit on github.com for Flyspray/flyspray is made

Github.com provides the configuration of such notification for a possible target like

https://bugs.flyspray.org/api/github.php

or

https://bugs.flyspray.org/api/github.php?project=1

in the settings of a project.

What the file needs:

• import some of the existing Flyspray classes from includes/
• config or load the secrets that are provided by github.com in the setup for the automatic notification
• check that secrets and more for authentication and authorization of requests coming from github.com
• parse the messages for Flyspray identifiers like ' FS#1234 ' or 'fix  FS#1234 ' or 'related to  FS#1234 '
• take actions on the results of that message parsing like making adding comment or modifying a task status

Bugs

Missing features

splitted from FS#1697 as own task

My version of PHP still shows deprecation warnings with flyspray.

Deprecated: mysql_connect(): The mysql extension is deprecated and will be removed in the future: use mysqli or PDO instead in /var/www/flyspray.itiab.co.nz/htdocs/adodb/drivers/adodb-mysql.inc.php on line 353

Have all mysql.connect instances been removed? The connect will be removed from PHP soon and will cause problems.

On flyspray/index.php?do=admin&area=newuser I sucessfuly register user with email ;

I don’t recieve popup with message ‘You did’nt enter valid e-mail address’

After that on new page i receive error:

Completely unexpected exception: Address in mailbox given [;] does not comply with RFC 2822, 3.6.2.
This should never happend, please inform Flyspray Developers

I wanted edit/fix the comment of an anonymous reporter, but the edit shows empty content on editing..

(here on closed, but non yet implemented  FS#218 )

While editing an existing task, there’s a “+” button you can click to add a comment as part of the edit. Unfortunately this is just a plaintext box instead of the HTML editor used everywhere else, so it’s impossible to get proper line/paragraph breaks if a comment is entered with this UI.

This problem makes it necessary to edit a task and add a comment as two separate steps, whereas in 0.9.9.6 it was possible to do them together in one step.

Note that this is the case with syntax_plugin=”none”. I don’t know if it’s also a problem when using other values for that setting.

On the roadmap it would make life a lot easier if it was possible to drag and drop tasks into versions.

As you can see on screenshot attachment the GUI on mobile view is not OK.

I marked with red field what need to be fixed.

Phone used: Samsung Note 4.

If you have a tasklist with tasks that have multiple assignees in a task and you search just by one of the assignees, the resulting tasklist shows only this user in the assignees column.

Expected: all assignees of the tasks are shown.

Please support Central Authentication Service, thank you.

At several places it could be useful to let the user view available tags:

1. When editing a task a toggle popup could show a list of selectable and existing tags.

I found several nice vanilla-js-multiselect-with-autocompletion scripts, but none yet that still works at a basic level when javascript is turned off.

My plan is now:

• Keep the current basic input text field for input tags and show current assigned tags like exampletag1;exampletag2;exampletag3 separated by ‘;’ that is sent to the server when saving the task and server handles evaluation of that string (validation, duplicates, removed, added, creating new tags if allowed for current user)
• A CSS only toggle that shows available tags that can be assigned (works even with js turned off), similiar to other places within Flyspray like advanced search toggle.
• If js turned off, the user must type the tag - not as fancy, but at least works. (I thought also about using a html select with multiple=”multiple” attribute, but was not convinced due styling not possible in modern browsers without js)
• If js is enabled, more fancier stuff is possible:
  • The input text field is hidden by display:none and instead the styled tags are shown.
  • The current added tags also get a little x to remove a tag by clicking it. The content of the hidden input text field is updated to reflect the current editing status. (click eventlistener)
  • A generated text input field for typing with autocompletion list shown of matching availbale tags. An unknown tag is added to the list if user is allowed to create tags. Clicking a item in the autocompletion list adds the tag and resets the autocompletion input text field for the next autocompletion action.
  • The tags within the toggle list with all available tags get also a click event listener, so clicking it adds them to the hidden text input.
  • Not sure yet if an added tag should be removed from the all available tags list or just make an CSS indication that a tag is still added, currently I tend to keep the list untouched, just highlight used tags of the task.

• Optionally make the all available tags sortable by:
  • list_position (default)
  • alphabetic
  • global or project level
  • popularity (count of tasks using a tag (n + unnumbered private)), requires adding a data attribute.
  • group by detected prefix like shape:triangle shape:circle shape:rectangle could show a group of tags as: shape: triangle circle rectangle

1. Make the list of tags searchable for the advanced search. added with FS1.0-rc10 by just using search key words also for searching list_tags table.

Hello,

When i put a link in Discord for example, it detects “Flyspray, a Bug Tracking System written in PHP.” as title. How to change it ?

Edit by peterdd: adapted task title/summary to the root of the problem.

There was a question on the mailing list:

I have a suggestion, even though I don´t know if it´s possible to do it. But if it is, it would be great!
In the comments list of a given task, is it possible that the comments appear from the newest one to the oldest ones, and not as it is now, with the new ones coming at the end of the list? This is because I deal with long comments list for a given task, and it is becoming difficult to reach the last one, that is, the newest comment, because the order in the comments is on the top, the older ones. If this could be altered it would be great. Kind regards
Ana ...

Quick anwsers:

1. Users can use ‘End’-key and ‘Pos1’-key on their keyboard to scroll to bottom and top of page. (lame anwser I know)
2. Another quick anwser is to just reverse the comments array in the appropriate template themes/CleanFS/templates/details.tabs.comments.tpl :

Replace

<?php foreach($comments as $comment): ?>

with

<?php
$comments_latestfirst=array_reverse($comments);
foreach($comments_latestfirst as $comment): ?>

But the real problem I think is that the details page (and others too..) is not optimized for todays wide screens (landscape views). Laptops have FullHD or higher but the Flyspray users still have to scroll to get an overview of a task.

And for narrows views too (mobile phones, tablet portrait view)

The attached screenshot shows moving the task details tabs beside their task description if the display width is over 1200 css pixel. (and the reversed comments too ). Done with pure css media query:

E.g. add to a custom stylesheet file custom_detailswidescreen.css in folder themes/CleanFS/ :

@media only screen and (min-width: 1200px) and (orientation: landscape) {
.details .tab.active{
        display:inline-block;
}
 
.details .tab{
width:44%;
padding-left:0px;
/*margin-top:60px;*/
box-sizing:border-box;
}
 
.details .commenttext pre {
overflow:auto;
}
.details .comment_container .comment {
width:auto;
margin-left:30px;
display:block;
}
.details .comment_avatar {
position:absolute;
}
.details #comments .fa.fa-user{
font-size:30px !important;
}
 
#submenu li a{margin-left:0;}
 
.details #submenu{
display:inline-block;
position:absolute;
padding:1em 0 0;
margin-top:26px;
}
 
.details #content{
display:inline-block;
box-sizing:border-box;
vertical-align:top;
width:55%;
}
 
/* just a temporary fix: should be redone in theme.css with class instead ids*/
#comments, #related, #notify, #remind, #effort, #history {margin-top:72px;}
 
}

(Has still some problems with current 1.0-rc1 when the project selector wraps. Also tab labels wrap if not enough width available and tab content do not adapt.)

What do you think? How should the details page look on different display sizes? How can it improve the workflow of the user?

My tests showed that the html accesskey feature is not well and consistent supported by current web browsers and is quite cumbersome to use.
And it seems it will not be better in future..

The only solution I see dropping that feature or replacing them with simple single-key-event javascript listeners, like it is currently done with keys o, j, k, n, and p.

accesskeys in Flyspray I talk about:

• l (current SHIFT+ALT+l Firefox) login dialog / logout
• a (current SHIFT+ALT+a Firefox) add new task
• m (current SHIFT+ALT+m Firefox) my searches
• t (current SHIFT+ALT+t Firefox) focus taskid search
• e (current SHIFT+ALT+e + Enter Firefox) edit task
• x or y? (current SHIFT+ALT+y Firefox) close task
• s (current SHIFT+ALT+s Firefox) save task

Also related to Keyboard navigation: tabindex

I run flyspray behind a reverse proxy with the front end url being https and with the actual back end server not being on a standard port and not using https.

Setting force_baseurl seems to sort most areas with flyspray’s url generation using that instead of picking up from $_SERVER, however post-authentication redirection does not do that it just processes redirect_to as is (which in my case means it picks up the protocol, name and port for the back end server rather than what’s set in force_baseurl).

./themes/CleanFS/templates/loginbox.tpl puts out $_SERVER[’REQUEST_URI‘] into a hidden redirect_to input field - on my setup on the front page that’s e.g. “/” or for a ticket url it would be “/index.php?do=details&task_id=999” so no protocol or hostname.

scripts/authenticate.php picks up that redirect_to value and just passes it to Flyspray::Redirect, which in turn calls FlySpray::absoluteURI on what it’s passed, and FlySpray::absoluteURI doesn’t use $baseurl to qualify the url.

Not sure what the best fix is - my suggestion would be that Redirect detects urls that aren’t fully qualified and adds the $baseurl on to the front of them, rather than calling absoluteURI (absoluteURI is used to set $baseurl if force_baseurl is unset, so that’s not appropriate to modify). Alternatively scripts/authenticate.php could check redirect_to and add $baseurl if needed.

If a task creator requested closure, and someone (developer) closes the task explicitly, the PM request cannot be later ‘accepted’ and the PM request remains in the queue.

Workaround - Deny request and queue item is removed OK.

It looks like the PM request button invoked details.close which returns early if task is already closed.

Problem: By replacing just the project_id of the closed task it is possible the task then has invalid field values within the target project.

Possible scenarios:

1. Ignore invalid values within the target project
   • Pro: Easy to do, an immidiatly revert back to the old project would “heal” the task properties.
   • Contra: may effect accuracy and reliability of other parts like searching, listing, statistic calculations
2. Silent change task field values to valid field values of the target project if necessary
   • Pro: relative easy to do
   • Contra: a bit loss of information, little side effects
3. allow user to modify the fields that must be changed so that every field of the task has valid values within the target project
   • Pro: accuracy
   • Contra: a bit loss of information(fallback to default values) if there are no similiar field values selectable within the project
4. allow user to modify the fields, fields or field select values that do not exists in target project will be automatically created.
   • Pro: accuracy
   • Contra: target project may be cluttered with too many fields/field values
5. ???