matrix-spec-proposals/proposals/4132-deprecate-event-on-room-alias-uris.md

MSC4132: Deprecate Linking to an Event Against a Room Alias.

Introduction

The spec supports 2 types of URI, the Matrix scheme and matrix.to links which allow deep linking to Matrix users, rooms and events. Event URIs can be constructed against either a room ID or a room alias the latter of which is fragile issue as a room's alias is mutable and so event links may be broken by changes to the alias. Users expect deep links to continue working so that older links continue to show the correct content. Therefore it is proposed to deprecate event links against a room alias.

Proposal

As room IDs are immutable, event URIs built against these will continue to work for as long as the room is reachable by the homeserver. In contrast, event URIs built against a room alias can break under the following circumstances:

• The room is upgraded, resulting in the alias pointing to the new room, which won't contain any events from the ancestor.
• The alias is removed/changed resulting in a dead link that can't be resolved.

The proposal would deprecate the 2 following URIs:

• Link to $event in #somewhere:example.org: matrix:r/somewhere:example.org/e/event
• Link to $event in #somewhere:example.org: https://matrix.to/#/%23somewhere:example.org/%24event%3Aexample.org

Specifically this means it would be marked in the spec as not to be used in future and clients should:

1. Stop making new event URIs with room aliases, generating the examples above as the following respectively:
   • matrix:roomid/opaqueid:example.org/e/event?via=example.com
   • https://matrix.to/#/!opaqueid%3Aexample.org/%24event%3Aexample.org?via=example.com
2. Continue to accept them as it will take time for other clients to update and legacy events will continue to exist.

It is worth nothing that this change would require clients to always add the via= fields when building event URIs as these are expected for URIs that reference a room ID.

Potential issues

Whilst most clients do take the sensible route and generate event URIs against a room ID (even when it has an alias), as it is part of the spec these kinds of links likely exist somewhere in room history and on the World Wide Web. This would mean that after deprecation clients may still want to handle these URIs when received.

Additionally, whilst not a new problem some clients don't always update the via fields, which poses a problem for rooms that have lots of single user homeservers: A single user leaving can result in the via to become non functional (which is essentially the equivalent of the alias being removed) and over time this can result in unreachable room IDs.

Alternatives

An alternative would be to leave things as they are, although this wouldn't be the best choice for the user.

Security considerations

It is unlikely that accepting this change would introduce any security considerations.

Dependencies

N/A