Another case of author component with an anonymous author

[TysonMN]

My friend's blog post (deployed and source) uses the Author component via :Author src=github. I also think their github configuration is correct (which was the issue in #18). This is consistent when the output of codedoc check, which says

twilliams@EDMONDS MINGW64 /c/Code/ThirdParty/coding-blog (master)
$ codedoc check

# Checking CODEDOC configuration ...

# Checking Title configuration ...

# Checking GitHub configuration ...

# No issues detected.

I tried updating all dependencies to their latest version (by running codedoc install after deleting node_modules and packages-lock.json). Still had the same behavior (when hosting locally).

What am I missing? Why does the Author component on my friend's blog post show an anonymous author?

[loreanvictor]

Will check it later today, thanks for the heads up!

[loreanvictor]

on a quick look: this seems indeed like a bug with the Author component, since the commit data is correctly fetched from GitHub API on that page.

[loreanvictor]

@TysonMN @nathans1309 so this is the issue:

the author of the last commit (and the only commit on that file) is apparently NOT a GitHub user, so basically GitHub doesn't provide author information about them. This is the response from GitHub:

[
  {
    "sha": "29acfcbed64dc4a04506b0259db17e625acad1cb",
    "node_id": "MDY6Q29tbWl0MjkxMTUzMzIwOjI5YWNmY2JlZDY0ZGM0YTA0NTA2YjAyNTlkYjE3ZTYyNWFjYWQxY2I=",
    "commit": {
      "author": {
        "name": "BTAA",
        "email": "nathan.sweeney@blocherconsulting.com",
        "date": "2020-09-08T21:18:05Z"
      },
      "committer": {
        "name": "BTAA",
        "email": "nathan.sweeney@blocherconsulting.com",
        "date": "2020-09-08T21:18:05Z"
      },
      "message": "first blog post",
      "tree": {
        "sha": "a899318408389622e28164c7e8a10492fce5d3a7",
        "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/nathans1309/coding-blog/git/trees/a899318408389622e28164c7e8a10492fce5d3a7"
      },
      "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/nathans1309/coding-blog/git/commits/29acfcbed64dc4a04506b0259db17e625acad1cb",
      "comment_count": 0,
      "verification": {
        "verified": false,
        "reason": "unsigned",
        "signature": null,
        "payload": null
      }
    },
    "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/nathans1309/coding-blog/commits/29acfcbed64dc4a04506b0259db17e625acad1cb",
    "html_url": "https://github.com/nathans1309/coding-blog/commit/29acfcbed64dc4a04506b0259db17e625acad1cb",
    "comments_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/nathans1309/coding-blog/commits/29acfcbed64dc4a04506b0259db17e625acad1cb/comments",
    "author": null,
    "committer": null,
    "parents": [
      {
        "sha": "9cc9cc78f3785540f6cff1a2de2c297815433e74",
        "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/nathans1309/coding-blog/commits/9cc9cc78f3785540f6cff1a2de2c297815433e74",
        "html_url": "https://github.com/nathans1309/coding-blog/commit/9cc9cc78f3785540f6cff1a2de2c297815433e74"
      }
    ]
  }
]

And as you can see the author object is null, and I also cannot click on the author name in GitHub to see their profile.

This of course is still a bug, since Author component can still deduce the name of the author and use that, but this would mean that the author displayed would not get an avatar and wouldn't be linked to anywhere in particular.

I will fix the issue with the component and roll an update when I get home.

[TysonMN]

Very good debugging @loreanvictor.

@nathans1309, your commit that added our first blog post uses your work email. In contrast, the merge commit GitHub created for you when you completed my PR uses your personal/gmail email. I had this happen to me before. You can associate your work email with your GitHub account. That will also fix this problem.

As a funny but related aside, since your only non-merge commit uses your work email (which is not associated with your GitHub account) and GitHub doesn't consider merge commits as a contribution, GitHub does not yet consider you a contributor to your blog's repository.

[loreanvictor]

Fix deployed via @codedoc/coding-blog-plugin@0.1.12. As discussed before, the effect of this fix in the provided case would be that the name of the author (and publishing date) would be properly displayed, but not the author avatar or the url to their GitHub profile.

[TysonMN]

You can associate your work email with your GitHub account . That will also fix this problem.

Another way that you can solve this problem @nathans1309 is by recreating that commit with you personal/gmail email and then force pushing. Normally people recommend against force pushing, but this is your repo that almost no one else will ever use.

[TysonMN]

...the effect of this fix in the provided case would be that the name of the author (and publishing date) would be properly displayed, but not the author avatar or the url to their GitHub profile.

Why that fix? I think it is possible to better with only a little extra work.

Given the username MyUsername, the URL to the corresponding GitHub profile is https://github.com/MyUsername, and a URL to an image of the corresponding avatar is https://github.com/MyUsername.png.

[loreanvictor]

@TysonMN which username are you referring to? In the provided case:

• the username on the commit is BTAA, however the url https://github.com/BTAA.png leads nowhere.
• the username of the repo can be used, but it would lead to two issues:
  • it is possible that the author of that particular post is indeed someone else without a publicly accessibly GitHub profile. In that case your proposed solution would lead to the incorrect avatar being fetched.
  • the proposed solution would introduce a coupling between the logic of Author component and a convention (not a specification) of GitHub API, which by nature can be changed without prior notice, leading to errors.

[nathans1309]

You can associate your work email with your GitHub account . That will also fix this problem.

Another way that you can solve this problem @nathans1309 is by recreating that commit with you personal/gmail email and then force pushing. Normally people recommend against force pushing, but this is your repo that almost no one else will ever use.

Thanks, @TysonMN I made those changes.

[TysonMN]

@TysonMN which username are you referring to?
...

• the username of the repo can be used, but it would lead to two issues:

  • it is possible that the author of that particular post is indeed someone else without a publicly accessible GitHub profile. In that case your proposed solution would lead to the incorrect avatar being fetched.
  • the proposed solution would introduce a coupling between the logic of Author component and a convention (not a specification) of GitHub API, which by nature can be changed without prior notice, leading to errors.

I was referring to this case with the two issues that you mentioned.

The second issue is definitely a concern. Maybe GitHub's API has a way to officially convert from a GitHub username to an avatar. However, isn't this already a concern? runs away to check Oh, it is not an issue now because the Author component becomes a script that fetches this data from GitHub on page load. I was guessing the data was obtained from GitHub at build time.

I hadn't considered the first issue. Which commit are you assuming is the author? The most recent commit that edited the file or first commit that created the file?

[loreanvictor]

Oh, it is not an issue now because the Author component becomes a script that fetches this data from GitHub on page load. I was guessing the data was obtained from GitHub at build time.

Yeah thats precisely why its a client-side script, as it needs to be re-executed when the user navigates.

I hadn't considered the first issue. Which commit are you assuming is the author? The most recent commit that edited the file or first commit that created the file?

Right now, the latest commit, since I suspected the last edit date should be displayed (so people can easily know if the post has been updated since the last time they saw it). This might not be ideal when multiple people start working on a post simultaneously though. My thinking was waiting for that to happen, and then act accordingly (I would personally love for it to display the first author and a limited number of most recent authors, with a link to GitHub so people can see its history for themselves, however depending on the case some other mechanism might be desirable).