Bear Web sync fails due to missing recordChangeTag

Bear Web
1

Operation system: MacOS Tahoe 26.5.1

Web Browser: Safari & Chrome

Bug report

I have recently been using Bear Web extensively to keep my personal Apple ID separate from my company Apple ID. While doing heavy editing in Bear Web, I noticed that sync occasionally fails.

Sync works normally until the first failure occurs. After that, it never succeeds again unless I refresh the web page. However, refreshing the page causes me to lose any subsequent edits that failed to sync.

I tried several scenarios to identify what triggers the sync failure, but I have not been able to pinpoint the exact steps. However, I do have some observations:

  • This does not appear to be a browser compatibility issue, as it happens in both Chrome and Safari.
  • At some point, the modify API call receives a BAD_REQUEST response, and all subsequent modify calls continue to receive BAD_REQUEST.
    • The reason field in the response body is: "missing required field 'recordChangeTag'".
  • The issue seems to happen when the edit includes a deletion operation.
    • Not every deletion causes the issue, but every occurrence of this issue seems to involve a deletion.

It usually occurs when I make many edits between modify calls, especially when those edits include deletions. I inspected the requests and found that the failing modify call contains a delete operation whose recordChangeTag is null.

For example, the last successful request has the following structure:

{
    "operations": [
        {
            "operationType": "delete",
            "record": {
                // truncated
                "recordChangeTag": "1vfj",
                // truncated
            }
        },
        {
            "operationType": "update",
            "record": {
                // truncated
                "recordChangeTag": "1vfi",
                // truncated
            },
            "recordType": "SFNote"
        },
        {
            "operationType": "create",
            "record": {
                // truncated
                "recordChangeTag": null,
                // truncated
            },
            "recordType": "SFNoteBackLink"
        }
    ],
    // truncated
}

The subsequent failing requests have the following structure:

{
    "operations": [
        {
            "operationType": "delete",
            "record": {
                // truncated
                "recordChangeTag": null,
                // truncated
            }
        },
        {
            "operationType": "update",
            "record": {
                // truncated
                "recordChangeTag": "1vfo",
                // truncated
            },
            "recordType": "SFNote"
        },
        {
            "operationType": "create",
            "record": {
                // truncated
                "recordChangeTag": null,
                // truncated
            },
            "recordType": "SFNoteBackLink"
        }
    ],
    // truncated
}

Here is another failed request containing multiple delete operations, one of which has a null recordChangeTag:

{
    "operations": [
        {
            "operationType": "delete",
            "record": {
                // truncated
                "recordChangeTag": "1vgb",
                // truncated
            }
        },
        {
            "operationType": "delete",
            "record": {
                // truncated
                "recordChangeTag": "1vg9",
                // truncated
            }
        },
        {
            "operationType": "delete",
            "record": {
                // truncated
                "recordChangeTag": null,
                // truncated
            }
        },
        {
            "operationType": "update",
            "record": {
                // truncated
                "recordChangeTag": "1vgd",
                // truncated
            },
            "recordType": "SFNote"
        },
        {
            "operationType": "create",
            "record": {
                // truncated
                "recordChangeTag": null,
                // truncated
            },
            "recordType": "SFNoteBackLink"
        }
    ],
    // truncated
}
2

Now this is how you submit a bug report :slight_smile:

3

Hi, thanks for the report. That’s extremely helpful. We’ll keep you posted here!

4

Thanks again for that report: it was gold and led me straight to an edge case I didn’t manage to replicate yet. Please update Bear Web at your convenience, the bug should now be fixed.

5

Thank you for the quick work!

Since you mentioned error replication, it might only occur on non-simple pages. I’m not sure about the exact prerequisites, but it could be a long page with a complex structure containing code blocks and images, or it might have non-Latin characters (specifically, Korean, which Mac handles in Normalization Form Decomposition).

I’ll try to see if the error is resolved.

6

I tried new update throughout the day, and it appears to be stable in terms of syncing, even for those files that frequently cause errors. :slight_smile:

Thank you again for the fix!

1 Like