Rejecting a Contact Request blocks further attempts to add user as a contact

[virginiabalducci]

Bug Report

Description

user 1 sends a contact request to user 2. User 2 rejects. The contact request gets stuck and these users cannot add each other.
There seems to be an issue triggered when the user rejects the contact request, blocking any other ways to add the contact.

Steps to reproduce

1. Create a new user (user 1)
2. send a contact request to user 2
3. As user 2, reject the contact request

Expected behavior

As user 1, when going to Settings > Messaging > contacts > Pending Requests, the request sent to user 2 should be deleted

Actual behavior

As user 1, when going to Settings > Messaging > contacts > Pending Requests, the request sent to user 2 is still showing up. I've tested with 3 new users, and the behavior can be reproduced.

Also, if the user 2 sends a contact request to user 1:

• no notification is shown on user 1's end
• On user 1's end, the previous request sent by user 1 (step 2) is still there as a Pending Request.

If user 1 blocks and unblocks user 2 to remove them from the 'Pending Requests', when trying to add them as a contact, user 2 cannot add user 1.

Additional Information

test 054 logs.zip
test054 geth.log.zip

test053 geth.log.zip
test 053 logs.zip

• Status desktop version: latest master
• Operating System: Mac OS Sonoma. Also tested on Windows.

[caybro]

I think this was designed as a "feature" to protect from spam; CC @jrainville @iurimatias do we still want that? 🤔

[virginiabalducci]

Thanks @caybro for taking a look!

What if the user rejects the contact by mistake? It would be nice to give the user one more chance.
I'm not certain how we could handle a spam scenario, perhaps it’s worth revisiting? Thanks!

[jrainville]

I think this was designed as a "feature" to protect from spam; CC @jrainville @iurimatias do we still want that? 🤔

Yeah, it might be by design. We don't want spammers to know that they got declined so that they can try again.

What if the user rejects the contact by mistake? It would be nice to give the user one more chance.
I'm not certain how we could handle a spam scenario, perhaps it’s worth revisiting? Thanks!

I think User 2 can then be the one sending the contact request and User 1's request should then show as "completed" and they would be mutual. Maybe there is an issue there though. I can try to reproduce and fix if that's the case.

[caybro]

Thinking about this usecase again; I think it's even easier to the person receiving the CR to just go ahead and straight "ban" the other user. That way, the request at least shows up in the Banned section, and can be revisited at any later time

[jrainville]

Thinking about this usecase again; I think it's even easier to the person receiving the CR to just go ahead and straight "ban" the other user. That way, the request at least shows up in the Banned section, and can be revisited at any later time

Do you mean the "reject" should act as a block? Do note that block straight up makes it so that User 2 would not be able to see any message from User 1 in that case (in a community for example).

If you just mean that rejecting should put them in another tab, I think it makes more sense. We had commented out code for that I think (because it never worked and it was super messy). We have a similar thing in the community for rejected requests.
I think with the latest changes by Michal and me, it should be doable to add this new tab called "Rejected contact requests" and then it would work as you probably proposed.

[caybro]

Thinking about this usecase again; I think it's even easier to the person receiving the CR to just go ahead and straight "ban" the other user. That way, the request at least shows up in the Banned section, and can be revisited at any later time

Do you mean the "reject" should act as a block? Do note that block straight up makes it so that User 2 would not be able to see any message from User 1 in that case (in a community for example).

If you just mean that rejecting should put them in another tab, I think it makes more sense. We had commented out code for that I think (because it never worked and it was super messy). We have a similar thing in the community for rejected requests. I think with the latest changes by Michal and me, it should be doable to add this new tab called "Rejected contact requests" and then it would work as you probably proposed.

Yeah, I meant for the "Reject CR" to work something like that 👍

[jrainville]

@virginiabalducci I just tested this and it works as expected from my POV of the requirements.

Here's what I did:

1. Create a new user (user 1)
2. send a contact request to user 2
3. As user 2, reject the contact request

Now, User 2 doesn't have a CR anymore and the state for User 1 stays as it was, because we do not want to let others know we rejected them

Now I want to "undo" that. Here's how:

4. User 2 sends a contact request to User 1
5. User 1 receives it and there are contacts

Nothing else is needed here. They are now mutual contacts, because they are both in a state where they send a contact request to each other (mutual).

---

Two improvements are possible though:

1. Do as Lukas proposed and move "Rejected contact requests" to a new tab in the Contacts panel so that you can "undo" the rejection with a more intuitive solution
2. There is a small bug where the CR message sent by User 2 on step 4 is not shown in the chat for User 1. See screenshot:
   

I will try to fix the second point now.

I don't know if we should create a new issue for the bug or for the new feature? What do you guys think?

[jrainville]

Just as confirmation, we have a test case in status-go that does just as I said here:

https://github.com/status-im/status-go/blob/ee7f4d249c29c34298541722ca7f7694dc3f23b8/protocol/messenger_contact_requests_test.go#L1163-L1168

// The scenario tested is as follow:
// 1) Alice sends a contact request to Bob
// 2) Bob declines the contact request from Alice
// 3) Bob sends a contact request to Alice
// 4) Alice and Bob are mutual contacts (because Alice's CR is "pending" on her side), Both CRs are accepted
func (s *MessengerContactRequestSuite) TestBobSendsContactRequestAfterDecliningOneFromAlice() {

[jrainville]

I opened a new issue for the new tab: #16844