Lost my previous shared work: it was overwritten

[breville]

This might be by design, but it feels like a data loss scenario.

I was signed out and made a fun dance on level 13. I shared the link. Expectation: that link works forever.

I finished the tutorial, saw my certificate, and then went back to level 13. I made a new dance. I shared the link. Expectation: a new link to my new dance.

Expectation: each time we finish and share a link, it should be a new link to the new dance, and it should work forever.

Reality: I got the same link both times, and the second dance overwrote my first dance.

[davidsbailey]

Thanks for reporting Brendan. Did you at any point confirm that the share link initially did point to your first dance? We have a known issue where if you go directly to dance puzzle 13 without a dashboard session cookie (for most devs this means going in incognito mode), we give you the wrong project id and don't save your work to it.

[breville]

I just reproed and the share link did initially point to the first dance, confirmed in a separate browser. Going back to level 13 and creating a second dance there then overwrites the dance and gives the same share URL.

Here are detailed steps:

Open incognito Chrome browser
Go to /s/dance
Go to level 13
Make a dance
Press finish
Copy URL
Test URL has the dance in a separate Firefox browser.
Back in Chrome, see certificate.
Go back to level 13.
Hit refresh.
Delete existing blocks and make a new dance.
Hit finish.
Copy URL.
Test URL has the new dance in a new tab in a seperate Firefox browser.
Notice that this is the same URL as before.
Go back to original dance tab in Firefox.
Refresh.
Observe that first dance is now overwritten.

Note that this was not an arbitrary attempt to find a bug. This was a real data-loss scenario I experienced with my nephew yesterday while making dances.

[davidsbailey]

Excellent detail! Can you please add the share link to this bug report?

[breville]

https://studio.code.org/projects/dance/AoGYwSkSrLjwNTGWL3JhUECj2d1esknYSoJw_r4Swm0

thanks!

[davidsbailey]

OK, I see what you are saying now. Yes, this is currently working as intended and is not the known issue I mentioned earlier. The previous version exists as a past version of main.json within S3, but we don't expose any way to access older versions for dance projects.

Solutions i can think of:

• start showing "version history" for dance projects
• remix the project every time you show the share link (via share, finish, etc) --> could increase pressure on db table size; could cause confusion later as many projects are generated.
• remove the channel token when you press "start over" --> might not cover all cases, such as when you delete the dance manually

PM input here would be appreciated @ryansloan @poorvasingal

[breville]

For what it's worth, as a casual visitor who's just become hooked on dance-party, I would expect a unique share link every time I finish a new variation, which sounds most like #2, especially since we're pressing a button marked Finish to get it.

[poorvasingal]

It sounds like this is more a situation where we need to highlight the "Remix" feature for students. I don't think we'd want to generate a unique share link each time for a project b/c often a student just wants to improve on their existing project, not create an entirely new one. If they want to create an entirely new one, that's what the remix button is meant to be for.

[breville]

I don't think I would have known to press Remix even if it were highlighted more. I pressed the Finish button when I thought I had finished the level and was ready to get a share link for it. Upon returning to level 13 and making a bunch of changes, and pressing Finish again, I still would expect a new snapshot to be taken, without interfering with the link I had previously generated more than 30 minutes ago in what felt like a separate session on the site. I had no concept of working on a "project" here, I was just enjoying the sandbox level on my new favourite tutorial.