Undo deletion (of files, users, contacts etc)

[jancborchardt]

(Since the relevant pull request was closed, opening this to track the feature: #1610 )

We should offer undo for destructive actions. This is a normal software pattern now (see Gmail, Android etc) and is very nice as opposed to modal windows. Also read Never Use a Warning When you Mean Undo

cc @nextcloud/javascript @ChristophWurst

[skjnldsv]

What style of popup/modal/notification do we want for that?

[jancborchardt]

I would say showNotification is fitting in this case. We used that before I think in the News app or somewhere else.

[jancborchardt]

@schiessle mentioned that this could be done by triggering the restore function of the »Deleted files« app. Might be good as a first working implementation. :)

cc @icewind1991 @ChristophWurst

[skjnldsv]

What about a menu like the contact menu with a count indicator (like the notification icon) of how many items are still in the undo section?
On each item we could have a progressbar to display how many time left the user have before final deletion?

[jancborchardt]

@skjnldsv a counter is not really necessary and strangely obstructive. That’s also not how any other undo mechanism works which people are used to from Google or Apple apps. :)

[jancborchardt]

Traditional tri-yearly postponing of this issue to the next milestone. 🎉

[biva]

I like this idea and agree with @jancborchardt about the counter: we should keep it simple, as anybody can still go to the deleted files section to recover deleted files. The objective should remain a quick possibility to correct an unwanted deletion.

Any chance to see it happening in NC14? I'd be particularly interested in seeing this possibility anywhere in NC, including apps (incl. contacts, calendar, deck)

[ChristophWurst]

Any chance to see it happening in NC14? I'd be particularly interested in seeing this possibility anywhere in NC, including apps (incl. contacts, calendar, deck)

Totally. Would you be interested in implementing this functionality?

[biva]

I'd love to... but I don't have any skills in coding. Available for testing though

[Quix0r]

The simplest way would be to add a column deleted TINYINT(1) UNSIGNED NOT NULL DEFAULT 0. More advance is deleted_at DATETIME/TIMESTAMP NULL DEFAULT NULL while default is not deleted (obviously).

[korelstar]

I was thinking about how to implement undo for deleted notes in the Notes app. My idea was:

Don't delete the object when the user wants to delete it, but just mark it as deleted on the client frontend and show an undo button. After seven seconds, remove the button and delete the object in the backend.

Drawback of this approach: if the client looses the connection to the server during these seven seconds, the object can't be finally deleted. Is this anyway a valid approach for generalization? The advantage is that it's implementation is relatively easy (only frontend).

[Quix0r]

You are running through open door here. :-) Mine was exactly the same with a specific idea for the database side.

[marcelklehr]

if the client looses the connection to the server during these seven seconds, the object can't be finally deleted. Is this anyway a valid approach for generalization?

@korelstar Good point. What do you say @jancborchardt ?

[ecc86]

Drawback of this approach: if the client looses the connection to the server during these seven seconds, the object can't be finally deleted. Is this anyway a valid approach for generalization? The advantage is that it's implementation is relatively easy (only frontend).

Wouldn't it be possible to have something like a cron job in the backend handle such requests of deletion? The frontend would then only communicate, that the file to be deleted will be gone in minimum 7 seconds and maximum $cron_repeat_time_for_delete_requests (or something).

Sorry I am just a hobbyist developer, no more coding expierience in PHP for many years..

[RokeJulianLockhart]

I just lost all of my contacts in Nextcloud because Outlook decided that a deletion of its contact via the Google Contacts Android application deletes all linked contacts. I can't believe that I can see all of my contacts in the activity log, but that no recycle bin of sorts exists.

This is really necessary.

By the way, @jancborchardt, http://alistapart.com/article/neveruseawarning was exactly the reason that I accidentally did this.