🖼️ Conversation avatars

[jancborchardt]

Update as per last discussions:

• Cropper like in user avatar
• Automatic shrinking
• Transparency => white background
• Animation not allowed
• One endpoint to rule them all 💍 : user avatar, file mimetype-icon, conversation-image****

Not available for one-to-one, file-conversations and video-verification
No mashing of user avatars as they would need updating and tracking when a user changes their avatar

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Work packages

• Server API @vitormattos
  • 🖼️ Conversation avatars API #8333
  • 🖼️ Conversation avatars API - Follow up #8443
• Frontend
  • 🖼️ Conversation avatars frontend #8334
• Android
  • 🖼️ Conversation avatars talk-android#2555
• iOS
  • 🖼️ Conversation avatars talk-ios#979

[Tachi107]

• No mashing of user avatars as they would need updating and tracking when a user changes their avatar

Can't the refetch be done manually? Like an option in the conversation settings to update the group picture

[nickvergessen]

Can't the refetch be done manually? Like an option in the conversation settings to update the group picture

Well, then when a user changes their avatar they need to ask all moderators to update it and so on.

[Tachi107]

Can't the refetch be done manually? Like an option in the conversation settings to update the group picture

Well, then when a user changes their avatar they need to ask all moderators to update it and so on.

Yeah, that could be a problem in big conversations, but at the same time I see the mashing of user avatars as something that would be primarily used in small groups, like a chat of ten friends, and asking a friend to push a button doesn't sound like a big issue

[nickvergessen]

Yeah, that could be a problem in big conversations, but at the same time I see the mashing of user avatars as something that would be primarily used in small groups, like a chat of ten friends, and asking a friend to push a button doesn't sound like a big issue

yeah, but since we always have to consider all Nextcloud installations, from 1 person to big companies, we will do what all bigger messengers do: No mash-up but just the current default icon.

[Tachi107]

Mh, okay, still better than not having the possibility to set a group picture at all :)

[nickvergessen]

API Specs

• We need OCS API, suggestion: /api/{apiVersion}/room/{token}/image - Similar to https://github.com/nextcloud/spreed/blob/master/lib/Controller/TempAvatarController.php
  • POST a new image
    • Needs to validate the file is an image
    • Needs to validate the image is a square and of a supported type (check User avatar code for what we should allow)
    • File should be stored with OCP\Files\IAppData with conversation token + file type as name
  • DELETE to remove an image
  • GET which serves the image as FileDisplayResponse
    • Not sure if that works as OCSController, if it does not we need another Controller with another route.
    • If AppData does not have a file with the conversation name, we fall back to returning an icon based on the conversation type
    • If the conversation is a one-to-one conversation we fall back to the user avatar?

[e-caste]

2 cool frontend features that I don't see mentioned above and that I think could be useful:

1. Telegram allows to "Search Web" when setting a group picture (e.g. I want to set it to a picture of a horse but I don't have one ready, I can just skip the step of downloading it locally and then setting it from my gallery)
2. Whatsapp also allows to set an "Emoji & Sticker". For a quick group chat creation process I think that could be a very nice UX addition and probably wouldn't be too hard to implement (last famous words?) in the sense that the user can spawn an emoji picker and choose from those. Maybe a nice improvement over using the rendered emojis, since they're low resolution, would be to use a high resolution emoji pack such as https://twemoji.twitter.com which also contains SVG versions. This is similar to the workaround @nickvergessen is using (setting emojis in the chat titles), but would be an official implementation.

[nickvergessen]

Reopening meta ticket until the dedicated issues got resolved

[nickvergessen]

@e-caste for 1. I can say that we are not going to add this because it creates security issues on the way.
2. sounds like a good/funny follow up idea, but it will not be part of the initial feature. Can you create a new ticket?

[Kitanit]

As I understand it will not work in NC 26, only 27+ ?

[nickvergessen]

Yes, but 27 is just around the corner