Inline Comments Missing After Space Export/Import Process

Summary

In-line Comments and Resolved Comments are imported with a Space Export, but throw a 500 error when the REST call is made for rendering the Page. This has been replicated with space exports from Confluence Cloud and Confluence Server.

Environment

• Confluence Cloud
• Confluence Server 5.7, 5.8.18 or 5.9.4.
• The Space has Resolved in-line comments

Steps to Reproduce

1. Go to a Space and a Page within that Space. Add two in-line comments and resolve one of them.
2. Do a full XML export of the Space
3. Import the Space export into a new instance (either same version or same major version)
4. Notice the import completes successfully, but the in-line and resolved comments are not displayed even though they are present in the entities.xml file and database.

Expected Results

In-line comments are displayed.

Actual Results

The in-line comments are imported into the database, however the user_key is not mapped correctly from the old instance to the new instance.

Workaround

SQL manipulation in the database is not supported. Please make sure you have a database backup.

1. Shutdown Confluence
2. Run this query

   select stringval from contentproperties where propertyname = 'status-lastmodifier' and stringval not in (select user_key from user_mapping) group by stringval;
   

3. Run this code to update the resolved comment's user to the correct user_key

   update contentproperties set stringval = (select user_key from user_mapping where username = '<username>') where stringval = '<old user_key>';
   

   Where

   • <username> is the username of the User who originally resolved the in-line comment.
   • <old user_key> is the value identified from the first SQL query.
4. Restart Confluence

In-line comments should now display

Analysis

In-line comments are generated by a REST call

• http://confluence.mycompany.com/rest/inlinecomments/1.0/comments?containerId=<pageid>&_=1460592565065

And this returns a 500, which in the logs is

2016-04-14 10:44:11,224 ERROR [http-nio-8090-exec-8] [common.error.jersey.ThrowableExceptionMapper] toResponse Uncaught exception thrown by REST service: null
 -- url: /rest/inlinecomments/1.0/comments | userName: jrichards
java.lang.NullPointerException
	at com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.inlinecomments.helper.InlineCommentUserHelper.getFullNameForUserKey(InlineCommentUserHelper.java:31)
	at com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.inlinecomments.entities.InlineCommentBuilder.buildResolveData(InlineCommentBuilder.java:54)
	at com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.inlinecomments.entities.InlineCommentBuilder.convertCommentToInlineComment(InlineCommentBuilder.java:111)
	at com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.inlinecomments.entities.InlineCommentBuilder.build(InlineCommentBuilder.java:84)
	at com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.inlinecomments.service.InlineCommentServiceImpl.getCommentThreads(InlineCommentServiceImpl.java:255)
	at com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.inlinecomments.resources.InlineCommentResource.getInlineComments(InlineCommentResource.java:82)
	at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor1269.invoke(Unknown Source)
	at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
	at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:497)

Here's the code

   public String getFullNameForUserKey(String userKey)
    {
        if (StringUtils.isNotEmpty(userKey))
        {
            return userAccessor.getUserByKey(new UserKey(userKey)).getFullName();
        }

        return i18nBeanFactory.getI18NBean(getUserLocale()).getText(ANONYMOUS_KEY);
    }

In the Space export XML, the in-line comment is associated with the user_key but if the user is not in the new Confluence, or if they do exist but don't have that same user_key then there's no Full name.

1. The above code needs to be more robust for checking nulls
2. The import needs to map in-line comments to username the same way Page ownership and other items are mapped