User Account Cancellation (by user) displays AJAX HTTP error

[JugglingCoder]

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Description

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After a user clicks the "Cancel Account" link in their email, they are taken to the website's > "Cancelling account" page. This page displays,
An error has occurred.
Please continue to the error page
(Then in red)
An AJAX HTTP error occurred. HTTP Result Code: 200 Debugging information folows. Path... (blah blah... looks like it's printing out text from the whole front page)

The account does successfully delete.

The URL (cancelling account URL) looks like this:
https://www.cloudbrat.com/batch?op=start&id=60

When I click the "Please continue to the error page" it says, "No active batch"

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Steps To Reproduce

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Click the "Cancel Account" link in a user's email

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Actual behavior

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An AJAX HTTP error occurred. HTTP Result Code: 200 Debugging information folows. Path... (blah blah... looks like it's printing out text from the whole front page)

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Expected behavior

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A clean screen saying, "Your account has been successfully deleted."

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Additional information

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Add any other information that could help, such as:

• Backdrop CMS version: 1.21.3
• Web server and its version: Apache (HostGator)
• Operating System and its version: unknown
• Browser(s) and their versions: FireFox and Chrome
  
  

[indigoxela]

Hi @JugglingCoder, many thanks for reporting.

Out-of-the-box I'm unable to reproduce the error.

My steps:

• User logs in
• User opens his account edit form
• User hits "Cancel account"
• Message: "A confirmation request to cancel your account has been sent to your e-mail address."
• User copies the link from the email and confirms to cancel
• Message: Myusername has been disabled.
• User gets logged out and is blocked

May we know more about your settings re accounts (/admin/config/people/settings)? Permissions (/admin/config/people/permissions#module-user)? Possibly interfering contrib or custom modules?

Your message seems very odd: "Status text: OK Response text: Create new account".

[JugglingCoder]

Thank you for your input indigoxela. Yes, I have a Custom Hook function "bs_cloud_user_cancel_methods_alter" where bye I call a custom function which 1.) zips up the users folder, 2.) moves that folder to a "trash" folder, 3.) then deletes that users folder and finally call 4.) user_delete($account->uid);

I didn't think that function would be an issue but I spoke too soon... I should have tried the "normal" Backdrop cancellations first. I'll try the normal cancellation methods and report back. Hmmm... I wonder if calling "user_delete($account->uid);" before doing the zipping will work, will try that too

.

[JugglingCoder]

This is NOT a Backdrop bug/issue, I posted too soon. The issue is with my custom cancellation hook. I switched to a default Backdrop cancellation method "Delete the account and its content." and it worked as expected. Will close this issue.

[JugglingCoder]

As mentioned, this is not a Backdrop issue, custom hook issue.

[argiepiano]

Keep in mind that the account cancellation is done by a batch process, which are pretty delicate creatures - anything may throw it off, and they are hard to debug (the most successful way for me is using Xdebug).

Question: are you doing the account deleting yourself? Where are you doing it? In an implementation of hook_user_cancel()? If that's the case, that will create issues, as that hook is invoked before the batch process starts. That batch process needs the account in order to process it.

[JugglingCoder]

Thanks for your input argiepiano.

"are you doing the account deleting yourself?" - yes. Created a custom cancel method "bs_cloud_user_cancel_methods_alter" which calls a custom function "bs_cloud_user_cancel". In "bs_cloud_user_cancel" I zip up the users folder and at the very end just call: user_delete($account->uid);

I'm messing with it now, moving some code/functions around. The final goal is to .zip up the user folder during account deletion (using a ZipArchiver class to do the zipping).

[argiepiano]

The problem is that hook_user_cancel_methods_alter() should not do any processing at all. This hook is only for adding a new radio button.

[argiepiano]

After implementing that hook you would need to implement hook_user_cancel(). That hook can do the zipping. Then you can modify the $method variable in that hook (you need to be sure it's passed by reference) and switch it to user_cancel_delete. Then let the batch do the deleting.

In a nutshell:

• Implement hook_user_cancel_methods_alter to show the new method option and do nothing else
• Implement hook_user_cancel($edit, $account, &$method) IMPORTANT: notice the "&" in front of method
• Do your zipping in that function. AND change $method = 'user_cancel_delete'; before returning

That's it. The batch will then delete the account after you've done the zipping.

[JugglingCoder]

wow, thank you for your help argiepiano. I implemented what you suggested (see code below) but a.) the user was not deleted (but blocked) and b.) got a PHP warning:

Warning: Parameter 3 to HOOK_user_cancel() expected to be a reference, value given in module_invoke_all() (line 975 of /home/cloudbrat/public_html/core/includes/module.inc).

`function HOOK_user_cancel_methods_alter(&$methods) {
$methods['HOOK_delete_and_zip'] = array(
'title' => t('ADMIN_TITLE'),
'description' => t('MY_HTML'),
'access' => user_access('Administer permissions'),
);
}

function HOOK_user_cancel($edit, $account, &$method) {
HOOK_zip_cancelled_user_folder($account->uid, $account->name); // function to .zip up user folder, move it and then delete it.
$method = 'user_cancel_delete';
return $method;
}`

[argiepiano]

Yes, I should have tested before suggesting 😄 . It looks like $method won't be passed as a reference, and can't be modified by the hook.

So... it's a bit more complicated. Question: is there any scenario where you want to use the delete method and not do the zipping? If not, instead of defining a new method, you could just instead implement hook_user_predelete() to do all the zipping before the user is delete.

[JugglingCoder]

"Yes, I should have tested before suggesting" - no problem, any bit of advice/clue is helpful... I just throw it in and give it a try.

I got it working how I wanted. Your suggestion of "hook_user_predelete()" is what worked.

I couldn't figure out how to "add" a cancel method to "hook_user_cancel_methods_alter" so I just over-wrote the default Backdrop method like:
$methods['user_cancel_delete'] = array( 'title' => t('MY_ADMIN_TITLE'), 'description' => t('MY_CUSTOM_HTML'), 'access' => user_access('Administer permissions'), );
The main reason I wanted a 'custom' method was so I could customize the text on the warning page, this works.

Then when the account is deleted the function you suggested is called,
function hook_user_predelete($account){ if($account->uid > 1){ my_function_to_zip_user_folder($account->uid, $account->name); } }

In the end, pretty simple resolution:) just took a lot of trial and testing.