client.remove() produces non-existing node errors

[kingbri1]

Environment:

• nodejs 14.x
• typescript 4.x

Hi there,
I'm currently working with managing files in remoteStorage where adding and reading files works fine. However, using the remove function produces this error and doesn't delete the file:

Cannot delete non-existing node /test-project/index.html
Cannot delete non-existing node /test-project/
Cannot delete non-existing node /

Code:

const remoteStorage = new RemoteStorage();
remoteStorage.access.claim('*', 'rw');

remoteStorage.connect('user@5apps.com', 'token');

remoteStorage.on('ready', () => {
    console.log('remotestorage is ready');
});
remoteStorage.on('connected', () => {
    const userAddress = remoteStorage.remote.userAddress;
    console.debug(`${userAddress} connected their remote storage.`);
    const client = remoteStorage.scope('/test-project/');

    client
        .remove('index.html')
        .then((x) => console.log(x))
        .catch((err) => console.log(err));
});

[raucao]

Before investigating this, just a note:

This could be an edge case with the default caching strategy (caching is enabled with the SEEN strategy by default) and node.js usage, which uses in-memory caching and where the cache is lost between restarts.

See https://remotestoragejs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/js-api/caching.html for details about caching.

However, it is still a bug, of course, because it should fetch metadata of the remote document again in this case, and delete it upon seeing it's there, before claiming that the document does not exist at all.

[raucao]

@bdashore3 Is this still a problem for you? If so, could you provide a more complete version of the failing code, so we can reproduce the error?

[raucao]

I had a look at implementing this, but I think it's actually not a good idea to delete something that a client isn't aware of existing.

If caching is turned on, but the cache disappears regularly (e.g. with nodejs), then the app should always first update the cache, before doing operations on objects it thinks might exist.

Closing this for now. However, please feel free to comment, and we can re-open it if there's a real need for this feature.