fix: router failing to match channel route when 'First Channel After Login' starts with a hash

[abhinavkrin]

Proposed changes (including videos or screenshots)

This PR fixes an issue where the router failed to match the channel route when the “First Channel After Login” setting started with a hash (#).
Because URLs interpret # as the beginning of a fragment, the browser stops parsing the path at that point, causing the router to treat the channel name as invalid. As a result, the client loaded an not-found error page, and the sidebar did not appear.

This fix removes the leading hash before routing, ensuring the channel is resolved correctly, and the client loads normally after login.

Issue(s)

Steps to test or reproduce

Further comments

SUP-916

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Bug Fixes

  • Fixed "First Channel After Login" redirect so channel names starting with "#" are normalized and users are routed correctly.
  • Redirect now triggers only for home routes and runs once per session to avoid repeated navigation.

• Tests

  • Added comprehensive tests covering redirect behavior across home, root, non-home routes, empty setting, and re-renders.

_{✏️ Tip: You can customize this high-level summary in your review settings.}

[dionisio-bot[bot]]

Looks like this PR is ready to merge! 🎉 If you have any trouble, please check the PR guidelines

[changeset-bot[bot]]

🦋 Changeset detected

Latest commit: e29a17764fb8a1d0e26fb70a18ad894553315bf8

The changes in this PR will be included in the next version bump.

This PR includes changesets to release 41 packages

Name	Type
@rocket.chat/meteor	Patch
@rocket.chat/core-typings	Patch
@rocket.chat/rest-typings	Patch
@rocket.chat/uikit-playground	Patch
@rocket.chat/api-client	Patch
@rocket.chat/apps	Patch
@rocket.chat/core-services	Patch
@rocket.chat/cron	Patch
@rocket.chat/ddp-client	Patch
@rocket.chat/freeswitch	Patch
@rocket.chat/fuselage-ui-kit	Patch
@rocket.chat/gazzodown	Patch
@rocket.chat/http-router	Patch
@rocket.chat/livechat	Patch
@rocket.chat/model-typings	Patch
@rocket.chat/ui-avatar	Patch
@rocket.chat/ui-client	Patch
@rocket.chat/ui-contexts	Patch
@rocket.chat/ui-voip	Patch
@rocket.chat/web-ui-registration	Patch
@rocket.chat/account-service	Patch
@rocket.chat/authorization-service	Patch
@rocket.chat/ddp-streamer	Patch
@rocket.chat/omnichannel-transcript	Patch
@rocket.chat/presence-service	Patch
@rocket.chat/queue-worker	Patch
@rocket.chat/stream-hub-service	Patch
@rocket.chat/federation-matrix	Patch
@rocket.chat/license	Patch
@rocket.chat/media-calls	Patch
@rocket.chat/omnichannel-services	Patch
@rocket.chat/pdf-worker	Patch
@rocket.chat/presence	Patch
rocketchat-services	Patch
@rocket.chat/models	Patch
@rocket.chat/network-broker	Patch
@rocket.chat/omni-core-ee	Patch
@rocket.chat/mock-providers	Patch
@rocket.chat/ui-video-conf	Patch
@rocket.chat/instance-status	Patch
@rocket.chat/omni-core	Patch

Not sure what this means? Click here to learn what changesets are.

Click here if you're a maintainer who wants to add another changeset to this PR

[coderabbitai[bot]]

Walkthrough

Normalize the First_Channel_After_Login setting by stripping a leading # into roomName, block names that start with # or ?, and perform a one-time redirect to /channel/{roomName} in LayoutWithSidebar and LayoutWithSidebarV2; add tests and a patch changeset documenting the fix.

Changes

Cohort / File(s)	Change Summary
LayoutWithSidebar component & tests apps/meteor/client/views/root/MainLayout/LayoutWithSidebar.tsx, apps/meteor/client/views/root/MainLayout/LayoutWithSidebar.spec.tsx	Use useSetting<string>('First_Channel_After_Login', ''), derive roomName by stripping a leading # and trimming, require non-empty roomName, reject names starting with invalid prefixes (#, ?), redirect to /channel/{roomName}, update useEffect dependencies to include roomName, and add tests covering normalization, redirects from / and /home, non-redirect scenarios, and single-redirect behavior across re-renders.
LayoutWithSidebarV2 component & tests apps/meteor/client/views/root/MainLayout/LayoutWithSidebarV2.tsx, apps/meteor/client/views/root/MainLayout/LayoutWithSidebarV2.spec.tsx	Mirror V1 changes: add INVALID_ROOM_NAME_PREFIXES, compute roomName (strip leading #, trim), guard against invalid prefixes, redirect to /channel/{roomName}, update effect deps, and add tests with mocked UI contexts/components validating the same behaviors and edge cases.
Changeset .changeset/sixty-bikes-know.md	Add patch changeset noting the fix for First_Channel_After_Login values that began with # (and other invalid prefixes), preventing client routing failures and ensuring correct redirection to the intended channel.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 3 (Moderate) | ⏱️ ~20-30 minutes

• Pay attention to:
  • useEffect dependency arrays in both components to ensure redirects trigger appropriately and only once.
  • Correctness of roomName normalization for edge cases (e.g., "#", strings with surrounding whitespace, empty values).
  • The invalid-prefix check logic and its interaction with the leading-# stripping.
  • Tests' routing mocks to confirm navigation assertions reflect actual push behavior.

Suggested labels

stat: ready to merge, stat: QA assured

Suggested reviewers

• pierre-lehnen-rc
• tassoevan

Poem

🐰 I nibbled a # and set things right,
One gentle redirect, no frantic plight,
Tests hopped in line and gave a cheer,
Sidebar's back — I munch a carrot near 🥕

Pre-merge checks and finishing touches

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title accurately describes the main fix: handling the hash symbol issue in the 'First Channel After Login' setting for correct routing.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	The PR addresses the core requirement from SUP-916 by fixing routing when First_Channel_After_Login starts with # and preventing other invalid prefixes (?, @) from breaking navigation.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	All changes are directly related to fixing the First_Channel_After_Login routing issue: validation logic in components, comprehensive test coverage, and changeset documentation.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.

✨ Finishing touches

• [ ] 📝 Generate docstrings

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• [ ] Create PR with unit tests
• [ ] Post copyable unit tests in a comment
• [ ] Commit unit tests in branch fix/missing-sidebar-invalid-first-channel

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[github-actions[bot]]

📦 Docker Image Size Report

📈 Changes

Service	Current	Baseline	Change	Percent
sum of all images	1.2GiB	1.2GiB	+12MiB
rocketchat	360MiB	349MiB	+12MiB
omnichannel-transcript-service	132MiB	132MiB	-24B
queue-worker-service	132MiB	132MiB	+64B
ddp-streamer-service	126MiB	126MiB	-536B
account-service	113MiB	113MiB	+454B
stream-hub-service	111MiB	111MiB	-291B
presence-service	111MiB	111MiB	-657B
authorization-service	111MiB	111MiB	-1.1KiB

📊 Historical Trend

---
config:
  theme: "dark"
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    height: 400
---
xychart
  title "Image Size Evolution by Service (Last 30 Days + This PR)"
  x-axis ["11/15 22:28", "11/16 01:28", "11/17 23:50", "11/18 22:53", "11/19 23:02", "11/21 16:49", "11/24 17:34", "11/27 22:32", "11/28 19:05", "12/01 23:01", "12/02 21:57", "12/03 21:00", "12/04 18:17", "12/05 21:56", "12/08 20:15", "12/09 22:17", "12/10 23:26", "12/11 01:16", "12/11 10:47 (PR)"]
  y-axis "Size (GB)" 0 --> 0.5
  line "account-service" [0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11]
  line "authorization-service" [0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11]
  line "ddp-streamer-service" [0.12, 0.12, 0.12, 0.12, 0.12, 0.12, 0.12, 0.12, 0.12, 0.12, 0.12, 0.12, 0.12, 0.12, 0.12, 0.12, 0.12, 0.12, 0.12]
  line "omnichannel-transcript-service" [0.14, 0.14, 0.14, 0.14, 0.14, 0.13, 0.13, 0.13, 0.13, 0.13, 0.13, 0.13, 0.13, 0.13, 0.13, 0.13, 0.13, 0.13, 0.13]
  line "presence-service" [0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11]
  line "queue-worker-service" [0.14, 0.14, 0.14, 0.14, 0.14, 0.13, 0.13, 0.13, 0.13, 0.13, 0.13, 0.13, 0.13, 0.13, 0.13, 0.13, 0.13, 0.13, 0.13]
  line "rocketchat" [0.36, 0.36, 0.35, 0.35, 0.35, 0.34, 0.34, 0.34, 0.34, 0.34, 0.34, 0.34, 0.34, 0.34, 0.34, 0.34, 0.34, 0.34, 0.35]
  line "stream-hub-service" [0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0.11]

Statistics (last 18 days):

• 📊 Average: 1.5GiB
• ⬇️ Minimum: 1.2GiB
• ⬆️ Maximum: 1.6GiB
• 🎯 Current PR: 1.2GiB

ℹ️ About this report

This report compares Docker image sizes from this build against the develop baseline.

• Tag: pr-37656
• Baseline: develop
• Timestamp: 2025-12-11 10:47:56 UTC
• Historical data points: 18

---

Updated: Thu, 11 Dec 2025 10:47:56 GMT

[codecov[bot]]

Codecov Report

:x: Patch coverage is 57.14286% with 6 lines in your changes missing coverage. Please review. :white_check_mark: Project coverage is 68.73%. Comparing base (99dcf8c) to head (e29a177). :warning: Report is 1 commits behind head on develop.

Additional details and impacted files

@@             Coverage Diff             @@
##           develop   #37656      +/-   ##
===========================================
+ Coverage    67.70%   68.73%   +1.03%     
===========================================
  Files         3452     3367      -85     
  Lines       113975   114342     +367     
  Branches     20941    20709     -232     
===========================================
+ Hits         77166    78595    +1429     
+ Misses       34680    33637    -1043     
+ Partials      2129     2110      -19     

Flag	Coverage Δ
e2e	57.25% <57.14%> (-0.04%)	:arrow_down:
e2e-api	42.28% <ø> (+<0.01%)	:arrow_up:

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[abhinavkrin]

Instead of only checking for #, maybe we should sanitize the string following the existing rules for channel names? For example a user could add !channel to the firstChannelAfterLogin, that would probably still cause the same bug

Hey @MartinSchoeler,

Based on your suggestion, I explored a few possible approaches and here’s what I found:

1. Slugified channel names When special characters are allowed in channel names, we store:

   • the slugified value in the name field, and
   • the user-provided name in the fname field.

   The client cannot reliably derive name from fname, because if a channel already exists with the same slugified name, the backend appends a suffix (e.g. slugified(fname)-<number>). This makes the final name unpredictable on the client side.

2. Why the page without a sidebar appears The page without the sidebar is the global not-found page. This happens specifically when the channel name starts with @ or ?:

   • @channelName results in /channel/#channelName

     • Path: /channel
     • Fragment: #channelName

   • ?channelName results in /channel/?channelName

     • Path: /channel
     • Query: ?channelName

   Since we don’t have any routes defined for the path /channel, these cases fall through to the global not-found page.

   In all other cases, routing resolves to the room routes. If the room does not exist, we correctly show the room not-found page along with the sidebar.

3. If we explicitly handle the two edge cases where the channel name starts with @ or ?, this issue should be fully resolved.