Onebox and Amazon not working (for me)

Support
1

I am continually getting an error "Sorry, we were unable to generate a preview for this web page because the following oEmbed / OpenGraph tag could not be found: description. "

Things I have validated:

  • All the links tested have a meta name=description tag.
  • The links create a valid onebox on meta.discourse

So, the issue is not an Amazon page issue.

Steps to remedy:

  • System is up to date ( 3.4.0.beta4-dev)
  • rebuilt app with all plugins removed. (Initially installed: discourse-adplugin, discourse-affiliate, discourse-subscriptions, discourse-yearly-review, discourse-whos-online, discourse-data-explorer, and, DiscoTOC)
  • rebuilt app with all components removed. (Initially installed: header submenus, easy responsive footer, discotoc, and discourse ebay affiliate)
  • restarted server
  • different browsers

Onebox will not pull the page information, though I will get a successful Onebox created with about 1 out of 20 tries. This has been most frustrating.

So Questions:

  1. Where would I find log and error information for onebox?
  2. Onebox appears to have a cache mechanism. How do you flush the cache?

Any suggestions for tracking down the what and how would be most helpful.

tia

1 Like
2

I removed all software customizations of the plugins and components listed above. Rebuilt the server and rebooted the server. (I know it is not windows, but I am trying everything.)

I can now get 9 out of 10 Amazon one boxes working.

We will start adding one component and plugin at a time to find out what is causing the issues.

Any detailed diagnostics assistance beyond the below would be helpful:

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3

From the rails console:

[1] pry(main)> Oneboxer.invalidate 'https://www.amazon.ca/Thud-Terry-Pratchett/dp/055216769X'
=> 0

[2] pry(main)> Oneboxer.onebox 'https://www.amazon.ca/Thud-Terry-Pratchett/dp/055216769X'
=> "<aside class=\"onebox amazon\" data-onebox-src=\"https://www.amazon.ca/Thud-Terry-Pratchett/dp/055216769X\">\n  <header class=\"source\">\n\n      <a href=\"https://www.amazon.ca/Thud-Terry-Pratchett/dp/055216769X\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow ugc noopener\">amazon.ca</a>\n  </header>\n\n  <article class=\"onebox-body\">\n    <img src=\"https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/919CVPkFxjL._SL1500_.jpg\" class=\"thumbnail\">\n\n<h3><a href=\"https://www.amazon.ca/Thud-Terry-Pratchett/dp/055216769X\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow ugc noopener\">Thud!: (Discworld Novel 34) : Pratchett, Terry: Amazon.ca: Books</a></h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Thud!: (Discworld Novel 34) : Pratchett, Terry: Amazon.ca: Books</p>\n\n<p>\n  \n  \n  \n  \n  <strong></strong>\n</p>\n\n  </article>\n\n  <div class=\"onebox-metadata\">\n    \n    \n  </div>\n\n  <div style=\"clear: both\"></div>\n</aside>\n"

You can peruse what’s available in the Oneboxer class.

2 Likes
4

Secondarily, there’s also InlineOneboxers, e.g. Thud!: (Discworld Novel 34) : Pratchett, Terry: Amazon.ca: Books

Similarly you can use

InlineOneboxer.invalidate(url)
InlineOneboxer.lookup(url)
2 Likes
5

After removing all components and plugins and rebooting, I got the amazon links appearing as correct oneboxes.

I then installed discourse-adplugin and immediately went back to 9 failures out of 10 tries. When I turned it off, I got a couple to work, and then it returned to the failure mode of not obtaining the description.

I removed the discourse-adplugin from app.yml and rebuilt it. Then, I rebooted the server. Amazon links started working again with onebox.

There must be some conflict with the combination of plugins and components that I am using. What options are there to debug this?

1 Like
6

After 12 hours of troubleshooting and combination testing of plugins and components and numerous rebuilds, it is working at this time. We will see how it responds over the next couple of weeks.

The only thing that has fundamentally changed is the order of the plugins in the app.yml. The discourse-adplugin is the highest plugin after docker_manager.

          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/docker_manager.git
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-adplugin
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-affiliate
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-subscriptions
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-yearly-review
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-whos-online
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-data-explorer

I would not think that the sequence of plugins would matter, but it did. When discourse-adplugin was in the last couple of spots, the Amazon links would not work with Onebox.

3 Likes