"Copy to Nextcloud Notes" Action Extension is broken

[Fletch-99]

Steps to reproduce

1. Copy any text from website or a url
2. Click share and then "Copy to NextcloudNotes"
3. Nextcloud Notes freezes on a blue splash screen.

Expected behaviour

The command on iOS Share Sheet should open the Nextcloud Notes app, then the user could select a note and paste the copied text

IOS version 17
Nextcloud Notes version: 4.2.0

[VisibleSampling]

I have been able to replicate this on my iPhone 16 running iOS 18

Additionally I have tested trying to share text instead of URLs and different app sources to share from all with the same results.

[Fletch-99]

Updated Nextcloud Notes to 4.3.0, issue remains

[getitforless1]

Same issue here, I get a blue screen of death when trying to copy to Nextcloud notes. This would be a great featured if it only worked to save the notes from my IOS device to my nextcloud server.

[Adnapeht]

Also experiencing this bug. I’m on iOS 18.4 (iPhone 12 mini), Nextcloud notes 4.12.0 and Nextcloud 30.0.10

[i2h3]

It looks like the share extension broke. This needs investigation.

[gerroon]

I have the same exact problem on IOS 18.5

[charlescurley]

I see this also. Nextcloud Notes 4.3.1 on iOS 18.4.1.

Mildly awkward workaround: copy into the clipboard, leave the original app, go to Nextcloud Notes, create a new note, paste in.

[i2h3]

I did have a look into this last week but now got busy with other tasks. I would like to fix this for the next release and as one of the next issues after #97 which is quite close to completion.

[i2h3]

I have been digging in this topics since this morning. There are several things to note:

• Action extensions are not meant for what the app is doing. They are meant for editing or transforming content in place, not sending content elsewhere. It would be more appropriate to have a share extension which shows up in the horizontal top row in the share sheet. Apple's own Notes app is good reference. It allows the selection of the target note, too.
• Extensions cannot open URLs from their sandboxed context without hacky workarounds. This is a security restriction. Apparently this was accounted for in the current implementation which does something rather hacky. The current action extension would also be possible without its non-functional UI but requires it to go through the responder chain and force the opening of a URL which otherwise is silently cancelled by the platform. The call contains another issue...
• ...deprecated APIs used. The URL opening method has been deprecated since iOS 11. There is a replacement for it, though. Which might just block the attempt for security reasons. 🤪

I need to think about this for a bit. I would like to avoid writing a completely new extension for now due to the required effort. That would introduce other problems, too, because the app's data organization is not prepared for what I have in mind. To do everything properly, the extension must update the target note on its own while not getting into concurrency trouble because some other process is editing the database or file simultaneously.

I have not seen the feature functional and in action, so I can only tell from the code what it does. As far as I understood, the current action extension does nothing else than to create a new note with the given content. Well, that looks easy… Wouldn't there be the problem with multi-process access to a CoreData database which could crash the processes… 😬 On a different note, the whole topic with note attachments and images would maybe require a different data management anyway. 🤔

I need to think about this.

[i2h3]

Since 4.4.0 mostly is about the new login and fixing several related issues, I would save this extension matter for a later release which can be dedicated to it, so 4.4.0 can get out. I am afraid that I need to implement a new share extension from scratch with a scalable data exchange method through app group containers. That is not rocket science and I know what needs to be done. But as off now, I got only a few work days left until I am likely busy with customer support matters for a bit again.

[gerroon]

Thanks for looking into it. Is there a way to just offer a basic share functionality so that it shows up in the standard share menu like other apps. There is no way to share it to the notes apps in any other way as far as I can tell.