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* Warn when an encrypted search runs before the index has finished building When a search runs in an encrypted room while the local Seshat index is still crawling not-yet-indexed history, results can silently come back partial. SearchWarning now subscribes to the event index's changedCheckpoint progress and shows a polite (role=status) notice while the crawl is in progress, clearing automatically the moment indexing finishes. * Scope the partial-index warning to the room being searched The warning was driven by `currentRoom() !== null`, which is a global signal: it is non-null while the crawler has any outstanding checkpoint for any room. Searching a fully-crawled room while an unrelated room was still being crawled therefore claimed the results may be incomplete when they were not. Drive it from `crawlingRooms()` instead, which reports the rooms with outstanding checkpoints by id, and pass the search scope and room id in from RoomSearchAuxPanel: a room-scoped search now asks only about that room, while an all-rooms search still reacts to any outstanding checkpoint. Using room ids throughout also avoids `currentRoom()` returning null, and so under-reporting a crawl, when the js-sdk does not know the room at the head of the queue. The `changedCheckpoint` payload only carries the globally-current room and cannot answer a per-room question, so the handler re-reads the checkpoint set. * Also warn when the searched room has not been indexed at all The crawl set cannot see a room that has no checkpoint: before the initial checkpoints have been seeded, such a room is absent from it and looks identical to one that has been fully crawled. That is the case issue #32253 describes, so ask isRoomIndexed() as well, and warn when the index holds no events for the room being searched. Only ask it while the crawler still has work outstanding. That is what the warning claims, and the index has no event for its contents changing -- changedCheckpoint fires on checkpoint transitions only, and an idle crawler is silent -- so a warning raised once the crawler had drained would never be re-evaluated and would stick. Rename the hook to useIsIndexIncomplete, as it no longer answers the narrower question of whether a crawl is in progress. Re-seed it from the checkpoint set on each scope or room change so that the previous search's answer is not left on screen while the lookup is in flight, but not on each checkpoint change, which would blink an already-earned warning off and on again. Also reword the crawlingRooms() doc, which described the set as the rooms being crawled when it holds every queued checkpoint too. --------- Co-authored-by: Michael Telatynski <7t3chguy@gmail.com>
Important Security Notes
Separate domains
We do not recommend running Element from the same domain name as your Matrix homeserver. The reason is the risk of XSS (cross-site-scripting) vulnerabilities that could occur if someone caused Element to load and render malicious user generated content from a Matrix API which then had trusted access to Element (or other apps) due to sharing the same domain.
We have put some coarse mitigations into place to try to protect against this situation, but it's still not good practice to do it in the first place. See https://github.com/element-hq/element-web/issues/1977 for more details.
Configuration best practices
Unless you have special requirements, you will want to add the following to your web server configuration when hosting Element Web:
- The
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGINheader, to prevent Element Web from being framed and protect from clickjacking. - The
frame-ancestors 'self'directive to yourContent-Security-Policyheader, as the modern replacement forX-Frame-Options(though both should be included since not all browsers support it yet, see this). - The
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniffheader, to disable MIME sniffing. - The
X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block;header, for basic XSS protection in legacy browsers.
If you are using nginx, this would look something like the following:
add_header X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN;
add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff;
add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";
add_header Content-Security-Policy "frame-ancestors 'self'";
For Apache, the configuration looks like:
Header set X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN
Header set X-Content-Type-Options nosniff
Header set X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block"
Header set Content-Security-Policy "frame-ancestors 'self'"
Note: In case you are already setting a Content-Security-Policy header
elsewhere, you should modify it to include the frame-ancestors directive
instead of adding that last line.
Building From Source
Element is a modular webapp built with modern ES6 and uses a Node.js build system. Ensure you have the latest LTS version of Node.js installed.
Using pnpm instead of npm is recommended. Please see the pnpm install
guide if you do not have it already.
- Install or update
node.jsso that yournodeis at least the current recommended LTS. - Install
pnpmif not present already. - Clone the repo:
git clone https://github.com/element-hq/element-web.git. - Switch to the element-web directory:
cd element-web/apps/web. - Install the prerequisites:
pnpm install.- If you're using the
developbranch, then it is recommended to set up a proper development environment (see Setting up a dev environment below). Alternatively, you can use https://develop.element.io - the continuous integration release of the develop branch.
- If you're using the
- Configure the app by copying
config.sample.jsontoconfig.jsonand modifying it. See the configuration docs for details. pnpm distto build a tarball to deploy. Untaring this file will give a version-specific directory containing all the files that need to go on your web server.
Note that pnpm dist is not supported on Windows, so Windows users can run pnpm build,
which will build all the necessary files into the webapp directory. The version of Element
will not appear in Settings without using the dist script. You can then mount the
webapp directory on your web server to actually serve up the app, which is
entirely static content.
config.json
Element supports a variety of settings to configure default servers, behaviour, themes, etc. See the configuration docs for more details.
Labs Features
Some features of Element may be enabled by flags in the Labs section of the settings.
Some of these features are described in labs.md.
Caching requirements
Element requires the following URLs not to be cached, when/if you are serving Element from your own webserver:
/config.*.json
/i18n
/version
/index.html
We also recommend that you force browsers to re-validate any cached copy of Element on page load by configuring your
webserver to return Cache-Control: no-cache for /. This ensures the browser will fetch a new version of Element on
the next page load after it's been deployed. Note that this is already configured for you in the nginx config of our
Dockerfile.
Development
Please read through the following:
Extending Element Web with Modules
Element Web supports a module system that allows you to extend or modify functionality at runtime. Modules are loaded dynamically and provide a safe, predictable API for customization.
What are modules?
Modules are extensions that can add or modify Element Web's functionality. They are:
- Built using the
@element-hq/element-web-module-api - Loaded in EW via config.json