Warning if facebook app id is invalid

[thgh]

Is your feature or enhancement related to a problem? Please describe.

I'm blocked on "Authenticating you with Facebook..." The chatwoot page source contains "FB_APP_ID": "5.02222222220797e+14" (redacted). It seems the environment variable is considered a number instead of a string.

Describe the solution you'd like

Best solution: accept numeric env variable gracefully (there is no information lost, the number is just badly formatted)

Also add a warning if the app is in an invalid format.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Only the warning.

Additional context

Could be because of kubernetes/helm.

[linear[bot]]

PR-1137 Warning if facebook app id is invalid

[pranavrajs]

@thgh Environment variables are stored as strings, regardless of their content. There is no standard way to test whether a value is a valid Facebook App ID. A basic number check doesn't ensure that the ID is valid. Considering that this is a very high effort for a low value outcome, we will not be proceeding with this.

[thgh]

I understand it takes some effort to check if the ID is valid, but it takes minimal effort to show a warning if it's misformatted: /^\d+$/

Would you accept a PR?

[pranavrajs]

@thgh The question is where to show it. Here are the options I've thought of and all of them are quite complex for the value it returns.

• We could disallow users from starting the server if the variable is invalid. However, this would lead to many unnecessary support questions and result in poor user experience.
• If we allow them to start the server, the SuperAdmin console is the only place to show the error message, but it's not a screen people regularly visit.
• Showing the error on the UI where the agent/admin sees the integration isn't useful since these are usually not the people who configure the server.

Let me know if I miss anything.

[thgh]

• Showing the error on the UI where the agent/admin -> sounds perfect.

Setting up Facebook is highly technical, the screenshots in the docs are outdated making it very challenging for technical people to set it up, let alone non-technical people.

It's also a recurring topic in Github issues:

https://github.com/chatwoot/chatwoot/issues/1822 https://github.com/chatwoot/chatwoot/issues/4752 https://github.com/chatwoot/chatwoot/issues/5147 https://github.com/chatwoot/chatwoot/issues/5953 https://github.com/chatwoot/chatwoot/issues/8180

[github-actions[bot]]

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