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hosting/photo-storage broken on static-site recipe — revert to asset-canister interim, decide long-term fate #1459
Description
Part of #1458.
hosting/photo-storage demonstrates programmatic uploads via AssetManager from @icp-sdk/canisters/assets. Since #1449 switched it to @dfinity/static-site, the example is broken at runtime: the certified-assets canister exposes none of the legacy API (list, store, create_batch, commit_batch — verified against certified-assets.did). App.jsx calls assetManager.list() on page load, so the app fails immediately. Only authorize coincidentally still resolves (certified-assets has a flat authorize model), masking the breakage.
Rewriting against the new interface is not viable: certified-assets mutations go through a single-session start_sync/upload_chunks/execute_operations protocol that is version-locked to the recipe's sync plugin and designed for deploys, not concurrent end-user uploads.
Interim fix (unblocks the example now): revert the recipe to @dfinity/asset-canister@v2.2.1 — the only canister supporting the AssetManager flow — with a comment explaining the deliberate exception, and verify the app works end-to-end again.
Long-term decision:
- (a) keep it permanently on the legacy recipe as the programmatic-uploads example, clearly labeled;
- (b) repurpose it to store photos in a purpose-built backend canister (overlaps with
rust/photo_gallery); - (c) retire it.
Depends on whether the legacy asset canister remains supported (icskills#256 keeps it as documented legacy) and whether a runtime-upload story exists/is planned for certified-assets.
Activity
marc0olo commentedon Jul 30, 2026
Status: the interim revert is applied locally and will land with the next batch of commits:
icp.yamlrecipe reverted to@dfinity/asset-canister@v2.2.1with a comment explaining the deliberate exception (so the next repo-wide recipe sweep doesn't silently re-migrate it).photo-storage, but the canister is namedfrontendinicp.yaml— the documented command could never have worked. Corrected toicp canister call frontend authorize ....Remaining in this issue:
marc0olo commentedon Jul 30, 2026
Manual testing surfaced a second, independent bug beyond the API mismatch: the app's dfx-era canister-ID discovery (
/(.*)\.localhost/host regex) breaks on icp-cli's name-based frontend URL (http://frontend.local.localhost:8000) — the regex capturesfrontend.localandPrincipal.fromTextthrowsInvalid character: "."at module load → white screen.Fixed in the working tree alongside the recipe revert:
App.jsxnow reads theic_envcookie viasafeGetCanisterEnv()(PUBLIC_CANISTER_ID:frontend+IC_ROOT_KEY, agent host =window.location.origin) — the same pattern ashello_world— with?canisterId=as fallback; the legacy asset-canister recipe serves the cookie, verified via curl. README updated to point at the URLicp deployprints.Verified so far:
listreturns assets viaicp canister call, new bundle serves on both URL forms. Browser upload flow verification in progress.marc0olo commentedon Jul 30, 2026
✅ Manual e2e verification passed (2026-07-30): with the recipe revert + cookie-based canister-ID discovery, the app renders the gallery, uploads work after
authorize, and photos persist across reloads — on the name-based URLicp deployprints.Remaining in this issue: only the long-term decision (keep on legacy recipe as the programmatic-uploads example / repurpose to backend-canister storage / retire).
fix(hosting/photo-storage): restore asset-canister recipe and fix can…
marc0olo commentedon Aug 4, 2026
closed via #1464
marc0olo commentedon Aug 27, 2026
Long-term decision: (c) retire.
hosting/photo-storageis being deleted from the repo.Rationale: we don't want to advertise using the asset canister as programmatic, end-user-facing storage any more. The interim fix in #1464 kept the example alive only by pinning it to the legacy
@dfinity/asset-canisterrecipe, which made it the single example blocking a clean "all frontends are certified-assets" story — and certified-assets has no runtime-upload API to migrate it to (mutations go exclusively through the recipe's sync plugin onicp deploy). Option (b) was rejected as redundant withrust/photo_gallery, which already demonstrates photo storage in a purpose-built backend canister.Removed: the example directory,
.github/workflows/hosting-photo-storage-example.yml, its CODEOWNERS entry, bothhosting/README.mdentries (including the "one deliberate exception" note about the legacy recipe), and thephoto-storagereference in the AGENTS.md ICP Ninja eligibility rules (genericized — the rule about controller-only setup steps still stands).Net effect: no example in the repo uses
@dfinity/asset-canisterany more.chore(hosting): drop the photo-storage example (#1478)