[Bug]: Cannot login to MusicBrainz (in settings)

[Aandree5]

Description of the Issue

Login screen opens on the client browser

Steps to Reproduce

1. open picard web
2. go to settings
3. click log in

Expected Behavior

No response

Actual Behavior

No response

Environment

No response

Possible Fix / Suggestion

No response

[Aandree5]

There are some undergoing changes, on Picard’s side, to how the browser integration works and how it launches the webpages. PICARD-3040: Register a custom protocol handler for browser integration - PR2596

For now, a workaround is to disable the browser integration in Options > Options... > Network > [Untick] Browser Integration
Login will then be possible via an auth code, some other features that rely on the integration may not fully work, like the Lookup in browser feature, it will open the browser page but it's not able to return the match automatically.

Will look into fixing this after they've finished the changes

[phw]

Hey, Picard developer here :)

The changes of the browser integration with MusicBrainz.org will have no effect on the login procedure (if we actually merge this, there are a couple of open questions on how we could support this reliable everywhere). They would change the handling of the tagger button. Also I think supporting a custom protocol will be even more complicated to support in your scenario.

If the docker container of picard-web is running on the local machine a simple way to get the browser integration working is to expose port 8000 locally:

docker run -p 80:5000 -p 443:5443 -p8000:8000 aandree5/picard-web

Then login, the tagger buttons and even submit cluster as release should all work.

But I think the usual setup would be that the picard-web container runs on a different (probably headless) system. Then this entire integration over a local HTTP server breaks down.

One way to get both login and the tagger buttons work on a remote server would be:

• Disable browser integration to force login via auth code
• After successful login enable browser integration again (so we can use the tagger buttons)
• The tagger buttons always point to localhost. To change this one could use the userscript https://github.com/phw/musicbrainz-magic-tagger-button but change TAGGER_HOST in that script to point to the remote server.

Another option would be some local setup that forwards the traffic on localhost to the remote server. Some port forwarding or local HTTP proxy.

Also important: An actual change to the OAuth procedure will also come, as Picard will need to change to the new MB OAuth (currently already used by ListenBrainz, but needs some more work for general availability). And that will eliminate the auth token support.

[Aandree5]

Hi @phw thank you for taking the time to give some feedback. I was thinking the custom protocol would make things harder, just didn't want to spend a lot of time working around something so to then change.

I did forget about people running this locally, although it's probably not the usual scenario, I will add some notes about forwarding port 8000 so at least that scenario is covered.

I do agree with that the usual setup would be probably a headless system (or at least running elsewhere), I had no idea that the auth code was going to go! That will be a shame, hopefully there will be something that can be done to make it work.

So as I see it (if all gets implemented, both the custom protocol and the new OAuth flow) there will be two slightly different areas to "fix" (just brainstorming here, some questions to look into, if you can answer any feel free too, would help a lot):

• The Auth flow

  1. Would the redirect_to parameter accept anything other than localhost? - (I doubt it)
  2. Is there any chance that Picard will be able to handle the OAuth flow entirely within itself? (like starting a simple browser window just to finalise the auth flow)
  3. Could maybe a plugin extend this auth flow in some way, maybe even by getting the token with its own browser window and saving it to Picard.ini (if there's where the token lives, I haven't looked yet)?
  4. Fowarding traffic to Picard Web host.

• All other browser interactions

  1. Any chance that the MusicBrainz urls would accept a parameter like "redirect_to" so to change the tagger button (I thinking this wouldn't be possible for security reasons maybe)?
  2. Maybe the userscript would be the solution here.
  3. Fowarding traffic to Picard Web host.

I guess the solution is, like you said, a local setup to forward the localhost:8000 traffic to the Picard Web host, or the userscript to edit the tagger button, which wouldn't help with auth). At least there may be a solution, which is good, I just want to find the best solution that will involve less actions on the client, that would be the perfect scenario.

If you find that there's something that can be done, and I can help with, let me know.