Thanks a lot for finding the bug and fixing it. There seems to be no response to that on the main limer branch. My server currently runs on PHP 7.3 and all was fine, but in the future, I will need to use github_install() from devtools to install limer from Jan-E's branch.

See  Please merge PR get_session_key.R: fix PHP 8.1 major flaw #62  now. The PR was finally merged. LimeR is compatible with PHP 7 and PHP 8!

Hi Jane,

I know I'm joining this conversation late, but I'm still hoping for some help or illumination:

I use the R package limer to retrieve survey data via remotecontrol from Limesurvey Cloud. It worked well until early October (must have been LS version 6.2.11 then). Now, running on LS 6.3.6, I get the same error message as reported above when trying to get a session key with get_session_key(): "Error: Argument 'txt' must be a JSON string, URL or file."

I have already tried using your fixed version of limer devtools::install_github("Jan-E/limer", force = TRUE) but this hasn't changed the outcome. I don't know which version of PHP is used by Limesurvey Cloud.

Are others experiencing similar issues? Any thoughts on solutions?

Thanks!
Clemens


 

This is really quite bad, I get the same error and the only change I made was used comfort update. Now LS version is

LimeSurvey Community Edition Version 6.3.6+231120

and my PHP has been 7.4 for a good few months and until this update was working well.

I played around with function from migliorati and came to conclusion that a lot of things work. But it seems that the response coming back from limesurvey might not be JSON? for example you do the usual limer options setup and then:

  body.json = list(method = "get_session_key",
                   id = 1,
                   params = list(username = getOption('lime_username'),
                                 password = getOption('lime_password')))
now you have the json rpc request (I think); then you give that request to httr::POST

POST(getOption('lime_api'),
            content_type_json(),
            body = jsonlite::toJSON(body.json,
                                    auto_unbox = TRUE))
you get a response similar to :Response [ lime.server.yours/index.php/admin/remotecontrol ]
Date: 2023-11-20 19:21
Status: 500
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Size: 20.8 kB
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC
"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
" www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd ">
<html xmlns=" www.w3.org/1999/xhtml " xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
<title>ArgumentCountError</title>

<style type="text/css">
/*<![CDATA[*/say instead of printing you save it to an object RRR, then I am sure in RRR$cookies[7] you have your session key

 

Thanks for looking into this, r0bis.

I just experimented with limer / remotecontrol on different LS versions on my server and found that it still works on LS 6.3.4, but the upgrade to LS 6.3.5 (and later) breaks it.

When checking the changelog , I found this issue mentioned for 6.3.4 --> 6.3.5: Fixed issue #19214: JSON RPC response content type should be application/json (#3610) --> see issue described here: bugs.limesurvey.org/view.php?id=19214

If I understand correctly, starting from 6.3.5, the JSON RPC response content type is application/json, while before it was text/javascript. This might break the limer get_session_key() function.

UPDATE: Getting an error message:

When trying to call the remotecontrol API with the limer approach on LS 6.3.5 and later:

the response shows an error message:
Unfortunately, I'm not familiar enough with JSON to figure out how to modify the request so it is valid.
 

Please : report the issue,
community.limesurvey.org/bug-tracker/

Since this breaks a pre-existing system, it's a problem that needs to be solved!
 

Thanks, DenisChenu, I have reported the issue here:

bugs.limesurvey.org/view.php?id=19258

Yes, this is what I am also getting. It seems that there is no content at all in terms of JSON, that there is just a 500 ERROR page that is returned. From what I understand the normal expected response is a JSON string, but there is no JSON

The error arises in this call
> session_key <- as.character(jsonlite::fromJSON(content(r, encoding="utf-8"))$result)
> Error: Argument 'txt' must be a JSON string, URL or file

If you look at the content that jsonLite is trying to parse, it is an HTML document:
> content(r, encoding="utf-8")
{html_document}
<html xmlns=" www.w3.org/1999/xhtml " xml:lang="en" lang="en">
[1] <head>\n<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">\n<title>ArgumentCoun ...
[2] <body>\n<div class="container">\n\t<h1>ArgumentCountError</h1>\n\n\t<p class="message">\n\t\tToo

I also know too little about JSON and what is the normally expected return. If you still have some working LS versions, you could easily check if this content is something different.

My hypothesis is - RPC does not return JSON but an HTML error page that limer has no idea about as it expects only a JSON string

btw content is httr::content()

r0bis wrote:

My hypothesis is - RPC does not return JSON but an HTML error page that limer has no idea about as it expects only a JSON string

Seems to be a PHP issue.

Can try you activate log file ?
www.limesurvey.org/manual/Optional_settings/en#Logging_settings
with debug=2 ?

Then you have more detail on the error in the log file.

 

I find that unlikely given that I have tested it with LS 6.3.4 and 6.3.5, all running on PHP 8.2.9.

Will look at the log files later, though, just to make sure

> PHP 8.2.9.

Warning : we still have issue with PHP 8.2 version.

You activate debug mode ?

@mfavetti made a PR for limer that should fix this issue.
Using that PR I created a new fork of limer with that PR
You can test it by running See  github.com/cloudyr/limer/pull/66 and  github.com/Jan-E/limer

Thanks Jan, I confirm that this fork `"Jan-E/limer"` works fine (PHP 7.4 and limesurvey CE Version 6.3.6+231120 )

thanks Denis, for suggestion to turn on logging. I was on wrong track, but participating in discussion on bugtracker with mfavetti helped a lot.

Jane wrote:

See  github.com/cloudyr/limer/pull/66 and  github.com/Jan-E/limer

If the updated version force to update external tool : we need to reverse and do it in 7.X version according to semver