Ubuntu.Web’s WebView.getUAString() is racy by design

[Olivier Tilloy]

See http://developer.ubuntu.com/api/qml/sdk-14.10/Ubuntu.Web.WebView/#getUAString-method for documentation.

This method is being called by the WebView in Component.onCompleted, and sets the shared context’s default user agent. If the WebView is instantiated with a url set, the first HTTP request is issued before getUAString() is called, and thus potentially with the wrong UA string.

This API is racy by design, there’s really no way to fix it.

There are currently 2 apps in the store using this API:

    com.viclog.2048
    com.viclog.flappybird

and 3 more using it with the UbuntuWebView, which is version 0.1 of the API, based on QtWebKit:

    com.ubuntu.developer.andrewsomething.stackbrowser
    com.ubuntu.developer.daker.x-type
    com.ubuntu.developer.fcole90.feedspot

Seeing those relatively small numbers, I think it’s a good opportunity to remove the API altogether, after ensuring that the apps are fixed to not use it. Documentation will need to be updated.

UPDATE: as of 2014-12-11, com.viclog.2048 and com.viclog.flappybird have been updated in the store, they no longer use WebView.getUAString(). So effectively no application uses the API, and it should be safe to remove it.

[Victor Thompson (vthompson)]

Updates to com.viclog.2048 and com.viclog.flappybird to not use the getUAString() API call have been submitted to the store.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

Awesome, thanks Victor!

With that, it should now be safe to remove the API altogether, knowing that it wouldn’t break any existing app in the store.

[Pat McGowan (pat-mcgowan)]

ok to land to deprecate the API, but not top priority

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package webbrowser-app - 0.23+15.04.20141212-0ubuntu1

---------------
webbrowser-app (0.23+15.04.20141212-0ubuntu1) vivid; urgency=low

  [ Olivier Tilloy ]
  * Remove the WebView.getUAString() API from version 0.2 of the
    Ubuntu.Web module. It is currently not in use by any app in the
    store. (LP: #1399601)
 -- Ubuntu daily release <email address hidden> Fri, 12 Dec 2014 11:32:16 +0000

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

Added a utopic task, as apparently this needs to be backported to utopic for the current online docs to be updated (there are no separate docs for RTM, all there is is docs for 14.10, which RTM is based on).

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package webbrowser-app - 0.23+15.04.20141212~rtm-0ubuntu1

---------------
webbrowser-app (0.23+15.04.20141212~rtm-0ubuntu1) 14.09; urgency=low

  [ Olivier Tilloy ]
  * Remove the WebView.getUAString() API from version 0.2 of the
    Ubuntu.Web module. It is currently not in use by any app in the
    store. (LP: #1399601)
 -- Ubuntu daily release <email address hidden> Fri, 12 Dec 2014 11:32:23 +0000