`author_id` is cascadeOnDelete and the cascade never fires, because users
are soft-deleted: the row behind a deleted commenter is still there and
the column still points at it. The plain relation handed back null
anyway, and every caller invented its own meaning for that absence.
Measured on main, one staff member's staff-only comment, before and after
the account is deleted:
/comments screen Dana Staff / staff -> Dana Staff / guest
the file's own thread Dana Staff / staff -> Dana Staff / guest
GET /api/v1/.../comments type staff -> type client
filter author_type=staff 1 row -> 0 rows
search "Dana" 1 row -> 0 rows
unfiltered 1 row -> 1 row
Three surfaces, three different wrong answers, each next to a name that
stayed correct -- so a row can read "Dana Staff" and "guest" at once. A
moderator filtering for staff comments does not see a staff comment that
is sitting in the list in front of them.
This is the author half of what #1717 fixed for client_context_id, and
DeletedClientThreadTest's docblock already describes both columns.
The fix is the relation, not the five call sites: author() reads a
deleted account, which is what authorName() already reached for by hand.
The resource, the filter and the search then need no change at all. The
two authorType() copies now ask author_id rather than the relation --
which after this answers the same either way, and is the rule
isFromGuest() and authorName() already follow.
Nothing that decides who may read a comment goes through this relation.
VisibleCommentScope and FileCommentPolicy both compare author_id
directly, so no visibility widens.
VisibleCommentScope says at the top of the class that its callers must
already have established that the viewer may see the file. The public
listing's comment endpoint establishes only the guest half of that — the
file is reachable without an account — and then hands $request->user()
straight to the authenticated reading.
For anyone the file's own gate would refuse, that reading is far too
wide. A staff account outside its library, or one holding no file
permission at all, read the file's staff-only notes; a client the file
was never shared with read the messages staff addressed to that file's
clients. Both get a 403 from GET /files/{file}/comments and needed only
to ask the public URL instead.
The endpoint now asks the file's own gate which reading applies. A reader
it admits sees no less than before. A reader it refuses gets what a
visitor gets, widened by their own comments — which is what this
controller has always promised them, and all it promised. The
held-comment rule moves into a method both readings share rather than
being restated.
The same root reaches PATCH and DELETE /comments/{comment}, which bind a
comment rather than a file and so never authorized `view` on it either.
They answer with the thread, and now with the one the file's gate allows.
Refusing them outright would be wrong: somebody who commented through
the public page is exactly the person entitled to edit their own words.
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.
denkfabrik-li