Fixed New conversation posts not showing until replied to

[Groatz]

Affected version

2.1

Exactly as per this thread:

XF 2.1 - New conversation posts not showing until replied to

This seems to be a randomly intermittent issue, but I have had a couple of different users report it. They get a conversation notification, but when they follow the link to the conversation that message is not there. But then it shows up if they post a message in the conversation. So far it...

xenforo.com

This seems to be happening when the conversation just gets over a page boundary, users need to send a message to be able to see the next message even though they do receive a notification.

This bug was in XF2.0 and still present in XF2.1

Regards, Groatz

 

[AndyB]

I experienced this today.

 

[Steve F]

Yes, it is happening here on a regular basis (anytime a new reply lands on a new page).

 

[Chris D]

For the cases that happened here, I may need to have the actual conversation IDs that are affected. I can't reproduce this locally, so I can only assume that something in one of the records has an inconsistent count or something.

 

[Steve F]

Can say I didn't notice it until the convo hit 200 pages. Not sure that even matters.

 

[Chris D]

Thanks for sending me details of the Conversation Steve.

I ascertained that some of the record counts were incorrect. Essentially the reply_count field which is used to calculate the number of pages and page boundaries was incorrect.

This has been resolved by virtue of running a Conversations rebuild but of course it doesn't answer the question as to why it happened in the first place.

 

[marquisite]

Can say I didn't notice it until the convo hit 200 pages. Not sure that even matters.

For what it is worth, I noticed this issue on someone's XF2.x site earlier this year, in a conversation at around page 7 (IIRC). The conversation's age was probably about 2 weeks old. This occurred elsewhere and not with XenForo.com or my own site.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Thanks for sending me details of the Conversation Steve.

I ascertained that some of the record counts were incorrect. Essentially the reply_count field which is used to calculate the number of pages and page boundaries was incorrect.

This has been resolved by virtue of running a Conversations rebuild but of course it doesn't answer the question as to why it happened in the first place.

Let me know if I can do anything, can probably give you access to the Conversation I mentioned in the thread linked in OP of this one.

 

[Chris D]

If it's on your own forum you can probably just tell me the result of these queries:

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM xf_conversation_message WHERE conversation_id = <CONVERSATION_ID>

SELECT reply_count FROM xf_conversation_master WHERE conversation_id = <CONVERSATION_ID>

SELECT reply_count FROM xf_conversation_user WHERE conversation_id = <CONVERSATION_ID>

That will prove the counts got skewed like in the case here, at least.

 

[SophieRu]

Hi Chris,
Yes, we have the exact same problem!
Here are our query results:

SELECT COUNT (*) FROM xf_conversation_message WHERE conversation_id = 4549
1878

SELECT reply_count FROM xf_conversation_master WHERE conversation_id = 4549
1875

SELECT reply_count FROM xf_conversation_user WHERE conversation_id = 4549
1875
1875

Chris, how do you run rebuilding conversation?

 

[Chris D]

The count of messages should be one higher than the reply count values (the first message plus X replies).

You can rebuild conversations from Tools > Rebuild caches > Conversation rebuild

 

[SophieRu]

Chris, how do you run rebuilding conversation?

Chris, how do you runing "rebuilding conversation"?

 

[Ozzy47]

Chris, how do you runing "rebuilding conversation"?

You can rebuild conversations from Tools > Rebuild caches > Conversation rebuild

 

[SophieRu]

I have done this many times. this did not fix the problem.

 

[Mr Lucky]

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM xf_conversation_message WHERE conversation_id = <CONVERSATION_ID>

= 771

SELECT reply_count FROM xf_conversation_master WHERE conversation_id = <CONVERSATION_ID>

=769

SELECT reply_count FROM xf_conversation_user WHERE conversation_id = <CONVERSATION_ID>

=
769
769
769
769
769
769
769

 

[Chris D]

I have done this many times. this did not fix the problem.

After running it, the queries you ran before should now be showing the correct numbers.

 

[Chris D]

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM xf_conversation_message WHERE conversation_id = <CONVERSATION_ID>

= 771

SELECT reply_count FROM xf_conversation_master WHERE conversation_id = <CONVERSATION_ID>

=769

SELECT reply_count FROM xf_conversation_user WHERE conversation_id = <CONVERSATION_ID>

=
769
769
769
769
769
769
769

Those reply_count values should be 770. If you rebuild conversations and run the queries again everything should output correctly.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Those reply_count values should be 770. If you rebuild conversations and run the queries again everything should output correctly.

Success! Thanks.

 

[Groatz]

The count of messages should be one higher than the reply count values (the first message plus X replies).

You can rebuild conversations from Tools > Rebuild caches > Conversation rebuild

I can confirm that running a Conversation rebuild fixed our problem and there have been no further reports (so far) from users. Indeed it's not clear why/how they counters became erroneous in the first place.

Regards, Groatz

 

[Chris D]

Indeed it's not clear why/how they counters became erroneous in the first place.

That's my primary concern, at this stage. I haven't actually looked into the code yet.

My current working theory is perhaps we're doing some of these updates outside of a transaction, so if the updates were to fail, it may leave the DB partially updated, or similar, but I've not actually looked at the code, yet