A client-scoped staff member with create_clients created a client and lost it in the same request. guardTarget() answers 404 for anything off their roster, and StaffLibraryScope::clients() leaves it out of their list -- so the record existed, was logged, was welcomed by email, and was invisible to the person who made it. store() redirects to the edit page, which is exactly where they landed on a 404. The API twin had the same shape: a scoped token got a 404 from every route that binds the client it had just created.
The new client is now attached to the creator's roster when the creator is client-scoped, on both sides. That is where a client they created belongs -- the roster is the same list assignedClients already uses for everything else they may reach. Unscoped creators gain nothing: they see every client already, and a roster entry would change what assignedClients means for them. Nothing is attached retroactively.
The widening this involves is self-limited: the only thing added is an account the creator just made, which starts with no files, no folders and no group memberships, so assignableClientIds gains nothing to reach. Seats do not move either, since they are counted from active and account_requested.
Verified before merging: 34 passed across both suites on the trial-merge, 2 failed / 32 passed with app/ reset. This is the busiest file set of the series -- it shares ClientsController with #1718 and Api/ClientsController plus the API test file with #1723 -- so the merged result was read rather than trusted: #1718's reassign_candidates gating and #1723's patchCustomFieldValues are both intact alongside it. scramble:export reproduces the committed docs/api/openapi.json byte for byte.
Reported and fixed by @denkfabrik-li.
Api\ClientsController::update() states the rule eighteen lines above the bug: "PATCH semantics, unlike the web form which always submits every field: an absent key means 'leave alone', not 'clear'." Every column obeyed it. The custom fields did not -- they went through saveCustomFieldValues(), which is create()'s pass: it walks every field there is and writes null for the ones the request did not carry. A PATCH naming one field emptied all the others, with nothing in the response to say so and no second copy of the value anywhere.
The write pass is still shared but is now entered two ways: create() keeps writing every field, and update() writes only the fields the request named. Creating a client is deliberately unchanged -- it is not a partial update, and a checkbox nobody ticked is a recorded "no" rather than an absent row. Clearing a field by naming it with an empty value still clears it, and the validation rules are untouched.
Verified before merging: 23 passed on the trial-merge, 1 failed / 22 passed with app/ reset. The two guard tests -- a named empty value still clears, create still records every field -- are green either way, so the write path was not simply switched off. The keys reaching whereIn() are stripped to real field ids by validateCustomFieldValues() before they get there. scramble:export re-run on the merged tree produces a docs/api/openapi.json identical to main's, so the published spec does not move.
Reported and fixed by @denkfabrik-li.
A client-scoped staff member with create_clients creates a client and
loses it immediately. guardTarget() answers 404 for anything off their
roster, and StaffLibraryScope::clients() leaves it out of their list -- so
the record exists, is logged, is welcomed by email, and is invisible to
the person who made it. store() redirects to the edit page, which is where
they land:
POST /clients → 302 → /clients/4
on_creator_roster → false
GET /clients/4/edit → 404
clients listed → ["Mine"] the new client is not there
Their own roster is where a client they created belongs, so it is attached
there. An unscoped creator gains nothing: they see every client already,
and a roster entry would change what assignedClients means for them.
The API twin does the same, for the same reason -- a scoped token gets a
404 from every route that binds the client it just created.
Three tests: the scoped creator can open and list the client, an unscoped
creator gains no roster entry, and the API twin behaves like the web. The
first and third go red without the fix.
update() states the rule eighteen lines above the bug: "PATCH semantics,
unlike the web form which always submits every field: an absent key means
'leave alone', not 'clear'." Every column obeys it. The custom fields did
not, because they went through create()'s pass, which walks every field
there is and writes null for the ones the request did not carry.
Two fields filled, a PATCH naming one:
status → 200
named field → "Robin"
the other one → null (was "ATU12345678")
Nothing says so in the response, and there is no other copy of the value.
The write pass is now shared but entered two ways: create() keeps writing
every field, since a new client has no values and a checkbox nobody ticked
is a recorded "no"; update() writes only the fields the request named.
Three tests: the untouched field survives, a named empty value still
clears, and create still records every field. Without the fix the first
goes red.
`reassign_candidates` is the delete dialog's picker: every active account
in the installation, by name and by role label. The same list is shared
on the clients index, the users index, both edit screens and privacy
settings, and it was narrowed by nothing.
Two lines above it on the clients index sits the listing itself, narrowed
through `scope->clients($viewer)` with a comment saying why: "a
client-scoped staff member is not shown the name and email of somebody
they can reach nothing of". The picker beside it handed over every client
in the installation, plus every staff account and its role name. The
filter by `can('delete_clients')` happens in React, which decides what is
rendered, not what is sent.
So the client half of the candidate list goes through the same
StaffLibraryScope as the listing, and each screen sends the picker only to
a viewer holding the delete permission it exists for. Staff accounts are
not narrowed -- they are not narrowed anywhere else either -- and an
unscoped viewer's list is unchanged, because StaffLibraryScope::clients()
returns every client for them.
Privacy settings keeps the whole installation on purpose: that picker sets
the erasure default stored once for everybody, behind edit_settings, so
narrowing it by whoever happens to be editing would store the wrong
answer. The parameter is nullable for that one caller, and the docblock
says so.
Four tests. Without the fix three go red; the fourth is the guard that an
administrator still sees every active account.
Two doors onto the client seat cap did not ask it. Both update()
methods -- the edit screen and PATCH /api/v1/clients/{id} -- clear
account_requested when a pending client is activated, under a comment
saying that counts as approval, and approval is the moment a seat is
spent. So a managed installation sitting at its cap kept taking clients
on for as long as registrations arrived, and self-registration is open
to strangers, so the supply of pending rows is not the operator's to
control.
Verified rather than taken on trust: the two new door tests were run
against the unguarded controllers and fail there, and every place in
app/ that clears the flag was enumerated to check no third door was
missed. There is none -- the other six already ask, and a conversion
refuses a pending account outright rather than approving it sideways.
The guard sits inside the approval branch, so an installation at its cap
can still rename a client it already holds. That is pinned by a test of
its own.
Conflicted with tonight's seat work in SeatAllowanceTest, which had
added an import beside the one this adds. Resolved by keeping both;
suite green at 2065 and PHPStan clean after resolution.
Reported and fixed by @denkfabrik-li.
On a managed installation with its staff seats full, /users/create opened
as though there were room. You typed a name, an address and a password
you had to invent, pressed Save, and the plan limit came back as a
validation error under the email field -- which reads as a complaint
about the address rather than a fact about the plan.
A full installation is an ordinary state on a plan sold by the seat, so
it is now stated up front. The list carries the seat position, the
button goes dead once the last seat is taken and says why, and the
create screen turns away anyone who reaches it by link or bookmark. The
guard in store() is untouched: that is still the rule, this is only the
door.
The refusal is worded once, in SeatAllowance, and the screen is handed
that sentence rather than writing its own -- two wordings of one limit
is how somebody ends up believing there are two limits. `full` is
derived there too, from the same comparison the guard refuses on, so a
screen cannot disagree with it about the edge (used > limit, after an
operator lowers a limit) and offer a button for a form that cannot be
submitted.
Clients get the same treatment: the cap exists there too, and reached it
the same way. Self-hosted installations have no limit, so they are shown
nothing about one.
SeatAllowance says a cap is only a cap if every door asks, and has a test
per door for that reason. Two doors do not ask.
The moment a seat is spent is the moment `account_requested` is cleared.
Five places do that. approve(), both store()s and ClientProvisioning ask
guardClient(); AccountConversion asks it through guardToClient(). The two
update()s -- web and API -- clear the flag with no guard at all, under a
comment that names exactly what they are doing:
// Activating a pending account through the edit screen counts as
// approval and clears the request flag.
Measured with clients: 0, one pending registration:
POST /account-requests/{id}/approve refused, flag still set
PATCH /clients/{id} active=true approved, clientUsed() 0 -> 1
PATCH /api/v1/clients/{id} active=true approved, clientUsed() 0 -> 1
A managed installation at its cap therefore keeps taking clients on, from
the edit screen or a PATCH, for as long as registrations keep arriving --
and self-registration is open to strangers, so the supply is not the
operator's to control.
Inside the branch, not above it. Above it, an installation sitting at its
cap could not rename a client it already holds, which would trade one
wrong refusal for another. There is a test pinning that.
The field is `active` rather than the default `email`: on this screen the
administrator is toggling `active`, and an error under the email field
would point at the wrong thing. approve() has no form of its own, so it
keeps the default.
Three tests, per door as the file's other eight are. The two door tests
were measured red against the unguarded controllers (2 failed / 18
passed). The third -- that editing an existing client still works at the
cap -- is green either way: it guards against the fix being written a
line too high, not against the bug.
Full suite passes (2051 passed / 2 skipped), PHPStan level 8 clean.
One thing worth knowing that this branch does not touch: on a parallel
run, `UpdateWelcomeTest > staff who may not read...` fails roughly one run
in six on untouched main, with `BindingResolutionException: Target
[Inertia\Ssr\Gateway] is not instantiable`. Measured over 24 baseline runs
before this change existed. It is not this fix, and it is not in scope
here, but it will start being visible as soon as the workflow parses
again.
Opening user management on cloud (623ad68) left a managed tenant able to
create staff accounts without limit. This is the other half, and the two
belong in the same release.
max_clients and max_staff_users are numbers the platform sells and does
not enforce — grep finds them only being passed to screens. The
application is the only process that can count against them, so it
accepts the number from the environment and refuses to exceed it. That is
not the same as inventing a plan tier, which is what config/api.php
declines to do when it will not key a rate limit off billing: nothing
here knows what a plan is.
## One definition
staffUsed() and clientUsed() are public and are what the guards read. A
control plane showing "2 of 3 used" from its own query, beside an
application refusing the fourth from a different one, disagrees
eventually — over an inactive account, or a deleted one — and the
disagreement reads as a billing fault rather than a counting one.
## What counts, and the consequences somebody has to explain
An inactive staff account occupies its seat. Excluding it would make
deactivation a way around the cap rather than a way to revoke access,
since reactivating is one click. The cost is an awkward incentive —
deactivating is the safe removal and keeps paying, deleting frees the
seat and asks what happens to the files — and it is better explained than
hidden.
A client awaiting approval does not. Self-registration is open to
strangers, and counting a pending request would let anybody exhaust a
paid limit from the outside, turning a pricing tier into an availability
control. The seat is spent at approval, which is where the guard sits.
A soft-deleted account frees its seat, though not its address —
AvailableEmailRule holds that until erasure. So a seat can be free while
re-adding the same person is still refused, which is the address rule
rather than this one.
## Eight doors, eight tests
There is no single User::create() to guard. StaffAccounts::create()
covers both staff controllers, but a promotion takes a staff seat without
creating anything, a demotion takes a client seat, ClientProvisioning
serves registration and LDAP and social sign-in alike, and approval turns
an uncounted request into a counted client.
A cap is only a cap if every door asks, so there is a test per door and
each was verified to fail without its guard — eight red, with the two
"must not change" cases green either way. DownloadAllowance's shape for
DownloadAllowance's reason: the failure mode is one of them quietly not
asking, invisible from everywhere except the door that forgot.
projectsend:admin is deliberately uncapped and has a test saying so. It
is the recovery path, and anyone who can run it can also edit the
environment the cap comes from.
Delete an account and dispose of its content in one transaction
Resolved the conflict with #1678 the way that PR's merge note predicted:
the erasure stamp goes inside the new transaction, so a deletion that
rolls back cannot leave a live account carrying a date on which it would
be erased.
Let a deleted account's email address come back into use
Closes#1648, and with it the last open item of #1647's audit of unique
indexes on soft-deleting tables.
Resolved a trivial conflict in both ClientsControllers: this branch and
today's e7b5b6a each add a constructor property at the same line, so both
are kept. Nothing else overlapped.
Two things found by checking #1696 and #1699 -- open branches carrying
the same fixes I wrote this morning -- against what I actually shipped.
**topClientsByStorage was scoped with the wrong question.** 4b8220a
narrowed it with StaffLibraryScope::files(), which is right for the two
widgets that name files and wrong for the one that names clients: a
stranger client's upload can sit legitimately inside a scoped viewer's
library, shared with a group one of their own clients belongs to. So the
file was theirs to read and the uploader's name was not theirs to see.
Measured: "Stranger Client Ltd", on nobody's roster, ranked on a scoped
dashboard. assignableClientIds is what the widget is actually asking, and
it is what #1699 used. Their version was right and mine was not.
**The client guard is one method now, not eight copies.** #1696 wrote it
as a private guardTarget() rather than repeating viewer-resolve plus
abort at each site, which is better, and this is a change whose whole
argument is that a rule stated in many places drifts. Behaviour is
identical; the eight sites now read as one rule.
The published document reorders a 404 below a 422 on one path. Scramble
reads abort_unless out of a method body but not out of a helper it calls,
so the 404 now comes from route model binding instead of from the inline
abort -- same response, different position. #1701's body names this trap;
worth knowing it costs ordering and not content.
Credit where it is due: both come from denkfabrik-li's #1696 and #1699,
which were open while I was writing the same fixes. Those two are closed
against this and against e7b5b6a, 4b8220a and 67e9204.
The other half of the sweep. ClientsController and its API twin checked
`abort_unless($client->isClient(), 404)` and nothing else -- a type
check, not a boundary, which is the phrase #1701 used about the group
membership routes for exactly the same reason.
Measured before the fix, with a client-scoped role holding the client
permissions:
GET /clients every client on the installation, name + email
GET /clients/{stranger} 200
PATCH /clients/{stranger} 302, name actually changed
DELETE /clients/{stranger} 302, client gone
The tell was one route over. ClientFilesController::index already draws
this line with StaffLibraryScope::canAssignClient and calls it "the same
boundary StaffLibraryScope enforces everywhere else in the library". Its
neighbours in the same family did not.
So the predicate is not new here. What is new is StaffLibraryScope::clients(),
the listing half of canAssignClient, so a screen narrows by the rule its
own buttons are guarded with instead of restating it -- restating it is
how this went wrong, and how the last four of these went wrong.
Eight actions take it: edit, update, destroy and the two-factor reset on
both surfaces, plus both listings. Answering 404 rather than 403, since a
client outside the roster should not be distinguishable from one that is
not there -- matching the isClient() guard already above it.
Account requests stay installation-wide on purpose: a self-registered
client who has not been approved belongs to nobody yet, so there is no
roster to narrow by and narrowing would empty the screen.
The published API document is unchanged -- both routes already documented
the 404 that the type check produced.
An account deleted by an administrator was soft-deleted with erase_after
null, so projectsend:purge-erasures — which filters on
whereNotNull('erase_after') — never reached it, and the unique index on
users.email kept the address reserved forever. Anyone re-creating the
account got "The email has already been taken", naming a conflict nothing
on any screen could show or clear (#1648).
Both halves of the issue's option 3:
Every deletion path now schedules the erasure. The stamp lives in
ErasureSchedule — self-deletion switched to it, and StaffAccounts::delete
(shared by the web screen and the API) and both client controllers call
it right before delete(). Same grace period, same purge, whoever deleted
the account. Deliberately no backfill for rows deleted before this
change: stamping them during an update would start a countdown to data
erasure that nobody chose at deletion time; the message below covers
them instead.
The staff creation paths swap unique:users,email for AvailableEmailRule,
which refuses exactly the same things but can explain the one refusal
the stock message can't: an address held by a deleted account now names
the date it becomes available, and one deleted before scheduling existed
points at projectsend:erase-account. A living account keeps the stock
message, and public registration keeps the stock rule — telling an
anonymous visitor the address belongs to a deleted account would confirm
it had an account here.
Deleting a staff or client account is two writes: soft-delete the account,
then cascade or reassign the files and folders it owns. All four destroy()
paths (Users + Clients, web + API) ran them one after the other with nothing
tying them together.
If the second write throws, the account is already gone but its content is
not handled. The concrete way in is the reassign branch: validate() checks
reassign_to_id with exists(active), but apply() re-resolves it with
findOrFail() a moment later (AccountContentDeletion:108), so a target
deactivated or deleted in between throws — leaving a soft-deleted account
whose files still point at it, and a UserDeleted log for a deletion that did
not finish.
Wrap the delete()+apply() pair in a single DB::transaction() in each of the
four destroy() methods. validate() and the authorization guards stay outside
it: they are read-only and must be able to reject before anything is written.
cascadeDelete()/reassignTo() already open their own transaction, which nests
as a savepoint under this one, so the account soft-delete, its activity log,
and the content work now commit or roll back together.
Tests: a DeletedAccountContent double that reports content to handle and then
throws while handling it (tests/Helpers.php) drives one test per destroy()
endpoint asserting the account survives the failure and no UserDeleted entry
is written; each goes red against the un-wrapped controller.
Four create flows redirected to the new record's edit page on success,
but store is gated by create_* while the edit page is gated by edit_*,
and PermissionChecker has no create-implies-edit rule. A role holding
create_* without edit_* would create the record -- write, activity log
and notifications all run -- and then meet a 403 on the success
redirect, with no way to tell the action worked and every reason to
submit a duplicate. Categories is reachable with plain UI clicks, since
the sidebar shows it from create_categories alone.
Keep landing on the edit page for anyone who may edit, and divert only
those who can't -- to the create form, which shares store's own gate
and is therefore reachable by exactly whoever just created the record;
the success toast shows there. The index would not do: Clients/Groups
lists are gated by manage_*, which store itself does not require.
Implying edit_* from create_* would not do either -- edit has no
own/others split here, so it would silently hand a deliberately narrow
create-only role edit (two-factor reset included) on every existing
record.
v1 could preview four kinds of file in a modal — images, video, audio and
PDF. v2 previewed only images, and not by decision: preview shipped as part
of the image *thumbnail* work (1c68aa1), so "previewable" quietly became a
synonym for "GD can decode it". FileThumbnailController::preview() gated on
ThumbnailGenerator::SUPPORTED_MIME_TYPES, the frontend mirrored the same
four types, and the dialog was a hardcoded <img>.
Rather than widen that list — it drives pathFor(), extensionFor(),
generate() and FileDiskCleanup, and a video reaching getimagesize() is a
500 — this separates the two questions. PreviewKind now answers "may these
bytes be served inline, and what element renders them?", while
ThumbnailGenerator keeps answering the narrower "can this app decode it
itself?", which is what renditions, the cache and the watermark hook
actually depend on. Image delegates to it so the two cannot drift.
The allowlist stays a security boundary: mime_type is sniffed from the
bytes, so text/html and image/svg+xml remain excluded, and PreviewKind is
deliberately narrower than "formats a browser might cope with" — no
quicktime, avi or matroska, because an embedded player for those shows a
black rectangle. Those still download exactly as before.
docs/security-audit-2026-08-05.md finding 1 recorded that adding
application/pdf "should be a conscious decision". This is that decision,
and three things were measured rather than assumed:
- An <iframe sandbox> cannot be used. Chrome refuses to run its PDF viewer
in a sandboxed frame at all (ERR_BLOCKED_BY_CLIENT, with or without
allow-same-origin) — the attribute removes the feature, it does not
harden it.
- nginx's `Content-Security-Policy: sandbox; default-src 'none'` on
/protected-files/ does work (a <video> frame lands in an opaque origin),
but Chrome exempts its PDF viewer from it, so it is not what protects
the PDF case.
- What does is the allowlist plus the browser's own PDF sandbox, where PDF
JavaScript has no DOM and no cookies.
Range requests were verified end to end: 206 with a correct Content-Range,
a byte-perfect file reassembled from three ranges, and a real browser
seeking to 10s of a 20s clip. nginx drops the upstream Content-Length on
the X-Accel path, so there is no collision.
Two settings, both defaulting on so no installation loses what it has:
clients_can_preview_files and public_listing_preview_enabled. Staff are
never gated. The anonymous side needed a route of its own — there was no
public preview endpoint — with its own throttle bucket, since a bare
throttle: shares one counter across that whole block.
A preview now logs at most one FilePreviewed per viewer per file per five
minutes: a <video> turns one deliberate act into a long tail of Range
requests, and a row each would bury the log.
Also fixes a layout bug the tests could never catch. A portal file row was
flex justify-between with three children — name, comment trigger, download
— so the middle one settled wherever the name happened to end and the
comment icon sat at a different place on every row. The name block now
takes the slack and every action lives in one trailing group, with the
comment trigger in a fixed-width slot so the icons form a column. And
because half the previewable files have no thumbnail to click — a PDF, an
mp3 and an mp4 all render as a generic icon — every row gains an explicit
PreviewAction beside DownloadAction, matching whatever style that theme
gives its download control.
Client file sharing, rebuilt from the ground up: a private area per
client, resumable uploads, folders, groups and categories, sharing with
expiry dates and download limits, comments, file versions, an activity
log, a REST API, and sixteen languages.
This repository begins here. ProjectSend 2 was developed privately, and
that development history is not published — the previous generation
remains available, with its own history, at projectsend/legacy.
Free software under the GNU General Public License v2, or (at your
option) any later version.
ignacionelson