URGENT: Kiwix-desktop 2.1.0 can't download anything online (with latest kiwix-serve at library.kiwix.org)

[kelson42]

I have deployed kiwix-serve 3.1.2 on library.kiwix.org.

As a consequence kiwix-desktop can not list anything on the online library. It makes the OPDS requests, but there is always 0 books listed.

[kelson42]

I believe, I understand the problem. kiwix-desktop 2.0.5 and 2.1.0 make following OPDS requests:

http://library.kiwix.org:80/catalog/search?lang=eng&count=0

"oldest" kiwix-serve as interpreted count=0 as infinite and "newest" kiwix-serve interpretes it as zero book.

The strict interpretation seems strictly correct to me, but it breaks older kiwix-desktops and provides a bad user experience.

What seems less good, is that if count is undefined it returns 10 books max and if max= (so empty string) it returns indefinite.

I'm not 100% what is the smartest approach to fix the problem.

[juuz0]

count=-1 gives me the results like previously. Not sure why but it just works
Should move this to kiwix-desktop I think

[kelson42]

For the moment the best I can figure out is:

Fix/release kiwix-serve/libkiwix to:

• Returns all books (indefinite numbers of book) if count=0, this would be a temporary patch/workaround to not break the forward compability of older kiwix-desktop with newer kiwix-serve. With the right explanative comment, this should be removed in 1 year or two to come to the proper behaviour (returning 0 books)
• Clarify it this is normal that count being undefined does not behave like being empty string.

Fix/release kiwix-desktop to:

• Use count=-1 in place of count=0 @juuz0