Android Client : Image not loading

Tiny Tiny RSS Support
1

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE POSTING: Read before posting / reporting bugs

Describe the problem you’re having:
Some time ago after a git pull on my VPS, I started seeing a weird issue with the Android app.
Sometimes the gocomics and other feeds that just show images won’t load the image.
But the strange thing is that if I rotate the device the image loads.
There is no error in the log in TT-RSS
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If possible include steps to reproduce the problem:
I’ve seen the issue on my Sony XZ1 Compact Android 8 & Samsung Tab Android 7.1.1
Both running version 1.238 of the app
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tt-rss version (including git commit id):
v17.12 (26a89ab)
commit 26a89ab6cb48e614a022aa65fefe62a8c9c71899
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Platform (i.e. Linux distro, PHP, PostgreSQL, etc) versions:
Debian VPS
PHP 7.0
PostgreSQL 9.6
Nginx webserver
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Please provide any additional information below:

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2

are you talking about article content webview or headline inline image viewer?

rotating your device most likely triggers another network request which succeeds for whatever reason

3

The app is using Compact headline display mode, where I can see the thumbnail of the image.
But going into the article the image is not shown.
So I’m guessing the article content webview.

But that sounds like a reasonable explanation, to why it works rotating the device.

Is there anyway to get an error log from the app?

4

webview is a component developed by google, i have no control over how it loads or doesn’t load images

it’s hard to believe webview is broken like this so the problem is most likely either your network connection or device

e: since this is multiple devices try to eliminate a common factor like a shared network connection

if your tt-rss server proxies images this might also be related (that is if the server is misconfigured somehow)

google adb logcat, although i’m not sure if webview logs anything

5

Thanks Fox.
I’ve disabled the af_zz_imgproxy plugin, I’ll report back if it solves the issue.
I’ve seen the behaviour on both devices when they are on different connections. So I’m pretty sure that you are onto something with the proxy.

6

Disabling the zz-imgproxy plugin didn’t solve the issue.

I’ll have to get into the logcat to see what is failing and why.

What really makes this frustrating, is that the behaviour is not consistent, so sometimes the image fails to load and sometimes it loads just fine.

7

I get the same issue and haven’t looked enough to find cause as well. It is a few different comic feeds that have just the image in the body and no other text.

Pixel2

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I’ve been seeing this for a few months. There are some feeds that always have to be reloaded - eg xkcd - and some that never have to be reloaded - eg smbc. It’s almost like something is timing out - by the time I get to x, it’s just done loading images. I can’t tell what is coincidence and what isn’t. But it’s also not a big deal, at least not for me.

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Now that other people mention it… It happens with me with XKCD, but I’ve been assuming it was my Internet connection or something. Nexus 5X here.

10

seems to be happening with specific feeds

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More info: I use the “no images” headline mode. Clicking on an XKCD comic loads the image correctly. Swiping from another post doesn’t load it.

12

do images load properly within headlines if you enable the option? its interesting whether the problem is specific to webview or app in general.

13

I don’t use the app, but for those of you having the issue who also proxy or cache the images on your TT-RSS install, I’d be curious to know if your server’s access log actually shows an attempt to download the image. It might help determine if it’s the app, server, or upstream server that’s the issue.

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@fox
Images work in the headlines view, so only the article content WebView is affected, and only when I swipe to it from another article.

@JustAMacUser
I don’t proxy the images, so I can’t check.

15

FWIW The image loads if you rotate the display from portrait to landscape.
Also seems to just be feeds modified by the af_comics plugin for me.

16

Rotating the screen loads the image immediately, seemingly without a network request.

I even tried this: swipe to image that wouldn’t load -> disconnect WiFi and mobile data -> rotate screen. And the image still showed.

17

My experience is the same as @imgx64 for everything he has said.

It’s not a feed-issue:

I’ve been seeing this consistently for several months now, including (but not exclusive to) a feed that I publish on the same server, with comics pulled locally by the server through my own proxy software. If the issue occurs, it’s always with an image from the same sources (e.g. XKCD), and never with most other sources. Not all of the affected sources have it with every image, but if the issue occurs with an image, it can always be reproduced with the same image, even in two different feeds. (e.g. the original feed)

It’s not a server/networking issue:

Apache access logs show nothing out of the ordinary for the requests to the proxied image. It’s just a 200. Size is correct. When you flip the device orientation, there is no additional network request because the image is retrieved from the app’s cache. And that’s the only way the image will show itself: if directly shown from the app cache. If the image is retrieved from the app’s “browser” cache through a network request with an if-modified-since, the apache log will show a 304 as expected, but even then the issue repeats itself regardless of the image already being downloaded before.

If you got an image in a feed this happens to you with, you can reproduce the issue always by closing the app, flushing the entire app cache, and go view the same image on the same feed through the app.

I wasn’t annoyed enough by the issue to see if this is some Android 8 or WebView specific bug.

18

is this only on 8.0? it would help if you could replicate this on AVD (needs android studio and stuff, a lot of bullshit to setup) but then again i’m not sure what i could even do about it, webview is largely doing its own thing anyway.

i’m at a loss here, guys. :man_shrugging:

19

If this is what I’ve also been seeing then it was happening on LineageOS 7.1-based Android as well. Definitely also happening on my new phone running 8.1.0.

My direct experience is that headlines view with image preview shows the image, but when I tap to look at just that single item often the image doesn’t show. I’d not yet tried rotating to see if it made any difference (does that still in effect get the app to restart at the new resolution ?).

20

It’s also on 7.1.1 on my Samsung tablet. I posted earlier.

From the other postings here I think it’s 100% related to Web view and I’m not sure that it’s something that you can fix Fox.
Perhaps a rollback of webview can be tried if that resolves the issue.