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Maniphest T267218

MediaWiki Session ID should persist according to user inactivity
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Description

Our notion of session as implemented in sessionTick needs to be the same as the notion of session that governs the lifespan of a Session ID memoized by mw.user.sessionId.

Currently this is not the case, as the value of mw.user.sessionId is a session cookie and consequently has a different TTL (one not based on user inactivity).

Potential solutions involve finding a home for the code dedicated to detecting a session boundary from sessionTick (as discussed on the patch).

Considerations

  • Placing this code in mw.user may be weird
  • Placing the code in ext.WikimediaEvents or ext.EventLogging would restrict usage of this session ID to clients with those modules loaded
  • Relocating the relevant code from sessionTick is going to (rightly so) trigger a new review

Acceptance Criteria

  • As a data scientist, I am able to change the sampling rate as defined by sessionTick (aka end of a "session" = inactivity for 30 minutes)

Details

ProjectBranchLines +/-Subject
mediawiki/extensions/EventLoggingmaster+281 -144Sampling logic and session/pageview id support
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Event Timeline

jlinehan created this task.Nov 4 2020, 2:18 PM
Aklapper added a comment.Nov 4 2020, 2:38 PM

@jlinehan: In which codebase would such changes have to take place?

Krinkle added a subscriber: Krinkle.Nov 6 2020, 7:10 PM

Placing the code in ext.wikimediaEvents or ext.eventLogging would restrict usage of this session ID to clients with those modules loaded

Both of these are loaded unconditionally on production page loads of all kinds. If the code is standalone or augmentative/reactive in nature, it can live in wmE. If it needs to export an interface to be called programmatically from within code in individual features, then it can live in EL (since wmE cannot be depended on as it is wmf-specific).

jlinehan added a comment.EditedNov 6 2020, 7:20 PM
In T267218#6602919, @Aklapper wrote:

@jlinehan: In which codebase would such changes have to take place?

I thought I replied to this days ago but my comment is not here. The interface in question lives today in MediaWiki core (specifically, mw.user.sessionId), however we may introduce a new interface rather than modify the one in core (for various reasons e.g. potential to complicate mw.user, breaking existing callers of mw.user.sessionId that use it for things besides analytics, so on...). In that case, such an interface will likely be sited somewhere in extensions WikimediaEvents (where the relevent session tracking code lives today) and/or (possibly) EventLogging.

In T267218#6609644, @Krinkle wrote:

Placing the code in ext.wikimediaEvents or ext.eventLogging would restrict usage of this session ID to clients with those modules loaded

Both of these are loaded unconditionally on production page loads of all kinds. If the code is standalone or augmentative/reactive in nature, it can live in wmE. If it needs to export an interface to be called programmatically from within code in individual features, then it can live in EL (since wmE cannot be depended on as it is wmf-specific).

It will likely be EL in that case, but I will follow up here when I make a full assessment.

jlinehan added a subtask: T248987: Session Length Metric. Web implementation.Nov 9 2020, 4:12 PM
sdkim moved this task from Inbox to Task Backlog on the Product-Data-Infrastructure board.Nov 16 2020, 4:22 PM
Aklapper added a project: MediaWiki-User-management.Dec 31 2020, 11:54 PM
JJMC89 moved this task from Backlog to Other on the MediaWiki-User-management board.Jan 7 2021, 8:38 PM
jlinehan added a parent task: T271455: Roll-up raw sessionTick data into distribution.Jan 14 2021, 5:29 PM

Sampling session lengths should be done with a token that uses the same semantics as the sessions themselves, so this is a dependency of sampling the session tick data stream.

sdkim assigned this task to jlinehan.Jan 14 2021, 8:15 PM
sdkim updated the task description. (Show Details)
sdkim added a project: Better Use Of Data.
sdkim moved this task from Task Backlog to Doing on the Product-Data-Infrastructure board.Jan 14 2021, 8:18 PM
sdkim moved this task from Inbox to Doing on the Better Use Of Data board.
gerritbot added a comment.Jan 27 2021, 6:53 PM

Change 659060 had a related patch set uploaded (by Jason Linehan; owner: Jason Linehan):
[mediawiki/extensions/EventLogging@master] [WIP] Sampling logic and session/pageview token support

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/659060

gerritbot added a project: Patch-For-Review.Jan 27 2021, 6:53 PM
jlinehan added a comment.EditedJan 27 2021, 6:56 PM

Uploaded WIP patch for engineers to discuss if desired at BUOD meeting. Not tested yet while I wrestle with my vagrant install but the point is clear. Will test, iterate patchsets and add tests from here.

sdkim moved this task from Doing to QA/Review on the Better Use Of Data board.Jan 27 2021, 7:17 PM
jlinehan mentioned this in T274172: [Session Length] Complete sessionTick deployment to all wikis.Mon, Feb 8, 6:49 PM
gerritbot added a comment.Mon, Feb 8, 7:27 PM

Change 659060 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/extensions/EventLogging@master] Sampling logic and session/pageview id support

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/659060

kzimmerman triaged this task as Medium priority.Mon, Feb 8, 7:30 PM
ReleaseTaggerBot added a project: MW-1.36-notes (1.36.0-wmf.30; 2021-02-09).Mon, Feb 8, 8:00 PM
Maintenance_bot removed a project: Patch-For-Review.Mon, Feb 8, 8:10 PM
jlinehan moved this task from QA/Review to Sign-off on the Better Use Of Data board.Wed, Feb 10, 7:04 PM
kzimmerman closed this task as Resolved.Thu, Feb 18, 1:07 AM
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