Summary

When creating a new page in Confluence, Synchrony will throw a 404 response in the background since it doesn't know about the newly created content yet. Although this is an expected behaviour, it doesn't work well with Custom Error Response software, like Amazon CloudFront, for instance, since it can't be set to avoid checking specific URLs.

The same behavior occurs when pages were created while Collaborative Editing (CE) was OFF and they are updated for the first time after CE is turned ON.

Suggestion

Gracefully handle this situation and have Synchrony returning a different status (ideally, 200) instead of 404. Synchrony may be configured to know that it doesn't know the content yet because it is new and just acknowledge it instead of throwing an error.

Impact

For administrators who wish to display friendly error pages instead of a 404 page to users through Custom Error Response software like CloudFront, this is a showstopper. The editor will be locked spinning and won't allow users to edit pages, since CloudFront will grab the 404 and understand it as an error.

Steps to Replicate

1. Setup a Custom Error Response in CloudFront or any other software/provider you may be using. Screenshot below:
   
2. Access Confluence.
3. Create a new page. Editor will be busted unless you disable the Custom Error Response.
4. This happens because in the background, 404 is throw as can be seen in the screenshot below:
   
5. URL that throws the problem is:

   Request URL: http://localhost:8075/synchrony-proxy/v1/data/Synchrony-e15e9edb-ebce-35ba-968a-0635574a54b6/confluence-1277954?state-at=@head&state-format=type-tagged&rewrite-request=true&cached=true
   

Scenario 2:

1. Turn Collaborative Editing (CE) OFF.
2. Create and publish a sample page.
3. Turn CE ON.
4. Edit the same page.

Workaround

Disable Custom Error Response for 404 responses or disable Synchrony (worst case scenario).

Related Information

This has been previously raised as a bug (CONFSERVER-43777) and closed due to expect behaviour. It is now being raised as a Suggestion instead due to the impact listed above.