Email Notification Problems. Aaagghh!

Jedi

I no longer receive email notifications that my favourite artists have submitted artwork. Twice this has happened in, like, two days alone. I found this out, because I went to the recent submissions page and clicked on to today's date. What the hell is going on here, folks? Does this mean you're gonna set up a watch system like Deviant Art?
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London · Moderator Joined: 23 Mar 2006 Posts: 6474

I have no idea really, but it may just be a delay (especially regarding the pictures submitted today, because a whole bunch of pictures [i]just[/i] got approved).
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Sora121 · Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 2:55 pm Post subject:

The email notifications system has had a small bug that none of us can seem to figure out fully.

All of the program looks fine, but for some reason a few users on Photo-Lucidity have explained that they too are not receiving emails. You may want to try re-enabling the submissions to see if that may solve the problem.

I almost doubt it will, though. I did add a small bit to the processing that handles the notifications, but that should have little no effect all the same.
Just in case, I'll ask if anything has changed on PL.

cstdenis · Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 4:56 pm Post subject:

The bug seems to only affect fav artist submission notification. As far as I've heard all other notifications work fine.
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Sora121 · Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 11:07 pm Post subject:

Just hit me, does the database distinguish between and number character being a number value and a number character being a character value?

This should still make no difference, and I may be completely wrong... seeing as usually when a textual character hits an INT database storage type and error is created.
I can't really type out my thoughts well tonight, but perhaps this can let you know what I'm getting at.

[code:1]
$i= 1;
$a = '1'; // "1"
while($i != 4)
{
$i++;
}
// should run fine

while($a != 4)
{
$a++;
}
//would create an error.
[/code:1]

If you get that, wouldn't that be right?
Seeing as $a isn't really a number its the textual representation of said number, where $i is a number. So therefore, trying to increment $a would bug out.

So what I mean is, the database has stored the textual representations for a few users ($a), and not the INT flags we wanted($i). And yet somehow can't tell the difference between them.

If we can't figure out a good, and more solid, reason for this to be happening, I say we try for updating the user database an replacing all the flags in the "notify_new_friend_picture" field with the integer of 1. It may fix it, I think...

cstdenis · Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 11:14 pm Post subject:

php is pretty loose on data typing. '4' == 4 evaluates to true. You'd need '4' === 4 to get a false. Your second code in php would probebly still work. In a language like C(++) it would probebly increment the ascii value causing it to work anyway (tho not in the expected way and would get weird after 9)

The database on the other hand is very strict on typing and would fail completely with an ugly error if there was a type mismatch there.

We aren't doing enough numeric comparison in the comment notifications for this to really be relevant tho IMO.

Strata did some major work on notifications for this upcoming version so he may have replaced whatever the buggy code is anyway. We'll see when we put it into production (or at least rc.)
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You will obey or molten silver will be poured into your ears.

Sora121 · Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 11:29 pm Post subject:

Right, lets hope it did get fixed.
If the bug can, and actually is spreading, we may be at a loss to it.

Jedi · Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 9:39 am Post subject:

Well, thanks for the responses, guys. I hope it gets fixed soon.
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The Force will be with you... always.

Stratadrake · Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 10:08 am Post subject:

[quote]Strata did some major work on notifications for this upcoming version so he may have replaced whatever the buggy code is anyway. We'll see when we put it into production (or at least rc.)[/quote]
Yeah, Trying to consolidate the comment processing and notifications, in part to reduce the possibility of duplicate notices.

Mildly related idea for future improvement: Include "opt-out" links in all notification e-mails.
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