CORS again

[thany]

Abstract

It's doing CORS errors again. The server is configured correctly though, this time.

Expected behaviour

• No error
• If there is an error, a detailed and useful explanation of what actually went wrong.

Actually happened

• CORS error
• No further information on why or how, just "nope, you figure it out".

Reproducing procedure

1. Latest CouchDB
2. CORS enabled, on all domains
3. Sync it

Report from the LiveSync

For more information, please refer to Making the report.

Report from hatch

---- Obsidian info ----
Navigator: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) obsidian/1.6.7 Chrome/124.0.6367.243 Electron/30.1.2 Safari/537.36
FileSystem: insensitive
---- remote config ----
Requesting information from the remote CouchDB has failed. If you are using IBM Cloudant, this is normal behaviour.

---- Plug-in config ---
version:0.23.22
remoteType: ""
useCustomRequestHandler: false
couchDB_URI: self-hosted(HTTPS)
couchDB_USER: 𝑅𝐸𝐷𝐴𝐶𝑇𝐸𝐷
couchDB_PASSWORD: 𝑅𝐸𝐷𝐴𝐶𝑇𝐸𝐷
couchDB_DBNAME: 𝑅𝐸𝐷𝐴𝐶𝑇𝐸𝐷
liveSync: false
syncOnSave: false
syncOnStart: false
savingDelay: 200
lessInformationInLog: false
gcDelay: 0
versionUpFlash: ""
minimumChunkSize: 20
longLineThreshold: 250
showVerboseLog: true
suspendFileWatching: false
trashInsteadDelete: true
periodicReplication: false
periodicReplicationInterval: 60
syncOnFileOpen: false
encrypt: false
passphrase: 𝑅𝐸𝐷𝐴𝐶𝑇𝐸𝐷
usePathObfuscation: false
doNotDeleteFolder: false
resolveConflictsByNewerFile: false
batchSave: false
batchSaveMinimumDelay: 5
batchSaveMaximumDelay: 60
deviceAndVaultName: ""
usePluginSettings: false
showOwnPlugins: false
showStatusOnEditor: true
showStatusOnStatusbar: true
showOnlyIconsOnEditor: false
usePluginSync: false
autoSweepPlugins: false
autoSweepPluginsPeriodic: false
notifyPluginOrSettingUpdated: false
checkIntegrityOnSave: false
batch_size: 50
batches_limit: 40
useHistory: true
disableRequestURI: true
skipOlderFilesOnSync: true
checkConflictOnlyOnOpen: false
showMergeDialogOnlyOnActive: false
syncInternalFiles: true
syncInternalFilesBeforeReplication: false
syncInternalFilesIgnorePatterns: \/node_modules\/, \/\.git\/, \/obsidian-livesync\/
syncInternalFilesInterval: 60
additionalSuffixOfDatabaseName: 923dd4a9cb007396
ignoreVersionCheck: false
lastReadUpdates: 23
deleteMetadataOfDeletedFiles: false
syncIgnoreRegEx: ""
syncOnlyRegEx: ""
customChunkSize: 0
readChunksOnline: true
watchInternalFileChanges: true
automaticallyDeleteMetadataOfDeletedFiles: 0
disableMarkdownAutoMerge: false
writeDocumentsIfConflicted: false
useDynamicIterationCount: false
syncAfterMerge: false
configPassphraseStore: ""
encryptedPassphrase: 𝑅𝐸𝐷𝐴𝐶𝑇𝐸𝐷
encryptedCouchDBConnection: 𝑅𝐸𝐷𝐴𝐶𝑇𝐸𝐷
permitEmptyPassphrase: false
useIndexedDBAdapter: true
useTimeouts: false
writeLogToTheFile: false
doNotPaceReplication: false
hashCacheMaxCount: 300
hashCacheMaxAmount: 50
concurrencyOfReadChunksOnline: 100
minimumIntervalOfReadChunksOnline: 333
hashAlg: xxhash64
suspendParseReplicationResult: false
doNotSuspendOnFetching: false
useIgnoreFiles: false
ignoreFiles: .gitignore
syncOnEditorSave: false
pluginSyncExtendedSetting: {}
syncMaxSizeInMB: 50
settingSyncFile: ""
writeCredentialsForSettingSync: false
notifyAllSettingSyncFile: false
isConfigured: true
settingVersion: 10
enableCompression: false
accessKey: 𝑅𝐸𝐷𝐴𝐶𝑇𝐸𝐷
bucket: 𝑅𝐸𝐷𝐴𝐶𝑇𝐸𝐷(0 letters)
endpoint: Not configured or AWS
region: 𝑅𝐸𝐷𝐴𝐶𝑇𝐸𝐷(4 letters)
secretKey: 𝑅𝐸𝐷𝐴𝐶𝑇𝐸𝐷
useEden: false
maxChunksInEden: 10
maxTotalLengthInEden: 1024
maxAgeInEden: 10
disableCheckingConfigMismatch: false
displayLanguage: ""
enableChunkSplitterV2: false
disableWorkerForGeneratingChunks: false
processSmallFilesInUIThread: false
notifyThresholdOfRemoteStorageSize: 0
usePluginSyncV2: false
usePluginEtc: false
handleFilenameCaseSensitive: false
doNotUseFixedRevisionForChunks: false
showLongerLogInsideEditor: false
sendChunksBulk: true
sendChunksBulkMaxSize: 25
configPassphrase: ""
preset: ""
syncMode: ONEVENTS
dummy: 0

Obsidian debug info

Debug info

<!-- paste here -->

Plug-in log

We can see the log by tapping the Document box icon. If you noticed something suspicious, please let me know.
Note: Please enable Verbose Log. For detail, refer to Logging, please.

Plug-in log

<!-- paste here -->

Network log

07/10/2024, 10:37:07->HTTP:GET to:/ -> failed
07/10/2024, 10:37:07->TypeError:Failed to fetch
07/10/2024, 10:37:07->TypeError:Failed to fetch
07/10/2024, 10:37:07->Could not connect to 𝑅𝐸𝐷𝐴𝐶𝑇𝐸𝐷: TypeError:Failed to fetch
**Note** This error caused by many reasons. The only sure thing is you didn't touch the server.
To check details, open inspector.
07/10/2024, 10:37:07->Could not connect to server.

Screenshots

Bog standard configuration in CouchDB webUI. This is done with the UI, I did not input these values manually at any point.

Result in inspector:

[thany]

Update: turns out it wasn't a CORS issue, but a server configuration issue. Somehow my reverse proxy stopped working, causing the proxy to display a 502, which on its turn doesn't support CORS, obviously.

But it's still a problem:

• The app just says "no, figure it out" and doesn't provide any detailed information whatsoever unless you really dig for it - and know how to dig for it. The log should list important information needed to resolve the issue, especially if it's a genuine CORS issue.
• It shouldn't use CORS in the first place. CORS is for website-to-website communication, and this is a desktop/mobile app. Even though it is built on web tech, it is still a standalone app. This is probably for the Obsidian devs, but it would be better if you, Livesync dev(s), would collaborate with Obsidian on this - I don't feel like I should be a middleman here.

Bottomline: this shouldn't ever happen. Especially since CouchDB has a tendency to forget CORS settings at some point for some reason. Awful behaviour, but that's why CORS issues can "suddenly" pop up.

[vrtmrz]

Thanks for pointing that out! Please allow me a slightly longer answer. Yes, this is a deep-rooted problem with a history. I have summarised it here.

The app just says "no, figure it out" and doesn't provide any detailed information whatsoever unless you really dig for it - and know how to dig for it. The log should list important information needed to resolve the issue, especially if it's a genuine CORS issue.

I completely understand your frustration. Unfortunately, this is due to the behaviour of the CORS errors. We cannot observe anything, not even their response code. A rather helpless situation. This is because we have been identified as something potentially and possibly evil.

It shouldn't use CORS in the first place. CORS is for website-to-website communication, and this is a desktop/mobile app. Even though it is built on web tech, it is still a standalone app. This is probably for the Obsidian devs, but it would be better if you, Livesync dev(s), would collaborate with Obsidian on this - I don't feel like I should be a middleman here.

As you mentioned, there is a way to actually send a request via the Obsidian API, which is not a web standard. However, there are some reasons to avoid using them from this plug-in:

• These APIs cannot be used for long-wait connections such as LiveSync, due to the limitation that only one request can be made at a time on Obsidian.
• A streaming version of the request API has been requested on the official forums once. However, the devs seem to think that if fetch can be used, it should be used. (Support streaming the request() and requestUrl() response body).
• This has significant performance issues. (Bug: mobile requestUrl has performance issue).

So, they are already working hard for us. We are just in on a bit of a niche.

Hence, using them can only be an optional feature with many downsides. And indeed has been in the past. The feature requires giving up LiveSync and only Periodic must be used.

I think we can see the same bad omen for the problem the situation caused, with my explanation, and the other issues involved. This option was finally removed in earlier releases due to "complication of the configuration dialogue" and "synchronisation problems". This was essentially an edge case feature, but because it promoted ease of use, it caused other problems that resulted from it, complicating the configuration and the situation. I have to swallow my shame, but you know the nightmare.

As you know, there are too many edge cases to simplify things. I wish I could express that my position and perspective are the same as yours. ...... I'm one of the contributors, but I'm also one of the users; I've been using it the longest, and I'm very dependent on it. (Ah, maybe that's why I'm so used to the terrible UI. Now I realise that I am starving for the new flavours).

If you have a good idea of how to implement this in the setting dialogue, please let me know. It could be quite helpful, even if it is just an image. (Using Obsidian's API cannot be enabled from the interface and is automatically disabled, but still works).