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MSC2676: Message editing

Users may wish to edit previously sent messages, for example to correct typos. This can be done by sending a new message with an indication that it replaces the previously sent message.

This proposal is one in a series of proposals that defines a mechanism for events to relate to each other. Together, these proposals replace MSC1849.

  • MSC2674 defines a standard shape for indicating events which relate to other events.
  • MSC2675 defines APIs to let the server calculate the aggregations on behalf of the client, and so bundle the related events with the original event where appropriate.
  • This proposal defines how users can edit messages using this mechanism.
  • MSC2677 defines how users can annotate events, such as reacting to events with emoji, using this mechanism.

Background

Element-Web (then Riot-Web) and Synapse both implemented initial support for message editing, following the proposals of MSC1849, in May 2019 (matrix-react-sdk, synapse). Element-Android and Element-iOS also added implementations around that time. Unfortunately, those implementations presented the feature as "production-ready", despite it not yet having been adopted into the Matrix specification.

The current situation is therefore that client or server implementations hoping to interact with Element users must simply follow the examples of that implementation. In other words, message edits form part of the de-facto spec despite not being formalised in the written spec. This is clearly a regrettable situation. Hopefully, processes have improved over the last three years so that this situation will not arise again. Nevertheless there is little we can do now other than formalise the status quo.

This MSC, along with the others mentioned above, therefore seeks primarily to do that. Although there is plenty of scope for improvement, we consider that better done in future MSCs, based on a shared understanding of the current implementation.

In short, this MSC prefers fidelity to the current implementations over elegance of design.

Proposal

m.replace event relationship type

A new rel_type of m.replace is defined for use with the m.relates_to field as defined in MSC2674. This is intended primarily for handling edits, and lets you define an event which replaces an existing event.

Such an event, with rel_type: m.replace, is referred to as a "message edit event".

m.new_content property

The content of a message edit event must contain a m.new_content property which defines the replacement content. (This allows the normal body fields to be used for a fallback for clients who do not understand replacement events.)

For instance, an m.room.message which replaces an existing event might look like:

{
    "type": "m.room.message",
    "content": {
        "body": "* Hello! My name is bar",
        "msgtype": "m.text",
        "m.new_content": {
            "body": "Hello! My name is bar",
            "msgtype": "m.text"
        },
        "m.relates_to": {
            "rel_type": "m.replace",
            "event_id": "$some_event_id"
        }
    }
}

The m.new_content can include any properties that would normally be found in an event's content property, such as formatted_body.

Encrypted events

If the original event was encrypted, the replacement should be too. In that case, m.new_content is placed in the content of the encrypted payload. The m.relates_to property remains unencrypted, as required by the relationships section of the Client-Server API specification.

For example, an encrypted replacement event might look like this:

{
    "type": "m.room.encrypted",
    "content": {
        "m.relates_to": {
            "rel_type": "m.replace",
            "event_id": "$some_event_id"
        },
        "algorithm": "m.megolm.v1.aes-sha2",
        "sender_key": "<sender_curve25519_key>",
        "device_id": "<sender_device_id>",
        "session_id": "<outbound_group_session_id>",
        "ciphertext": "<encrypted_payload_base_64>"
    }
}

... and, once decrypted, the payload might look like this:

{
    "type": "m.room.<event_type>",
    "room_id": "!some_room_id",
    "content": {
        "body": "* Hello! My name is bar",
        "msgtype": "m.text",
        "m.new_content": {
            "body": "Hello! My name is bar",
            "msgtype": "m.text"
        }
    }
}

Note that:

  • There is no m.relates_to property in the encrypted payload. (Any such property would be ignored.)
  • There is no m.new_content property in the cleartext content of the m.room.encrypted event. (Again, any such property would be ignored.)

For clarity: the payload must be encrypted as normal, ratcheting the Megolm session as normal. The original Megolm ratchet entry should not be re-used.

Applying m.new_content

When applying a replacement, the content property of the original event is replaced entirely by the m.new_content, with the exception of m.relates_to, which is left unchanged. Any m.relates_to property within m.new_content is ignored.

For example, given a pair of events:

{
    "event_id": "$original_event",
    "type": "m.room.message",
    "content": {
        "body": "I *really* like cake",
        "msgtype": "m.text",
        "formatted_body": "I <em>really</em> like cake",
    }
}
{
    "event_id": "$edit_event",
    "type": "m.room.message",
    "content": {
        "body": "* I *really* like *chocolate* cake",
        "msgtype": "m.text",
        "m.new_content": {
            "body": "I *really* like *chocolate* cake",
            "msgtype": "m.text",
            "com.example.extension_property": "chocolate"
        },
        "m.relates_to": {
            "rel_type": "m.replace",
            "event_id": "$original_event_id"
        }
    }
}

... then the end result is an event as shown below. Note that formatted_body is now absent, because it was absent in the replacement event, but m.relates_to remains unchanged (ie, absent).

{
    "event_id": "$original_event",
    "type": "m.room.message",
    "content": {
        "body": "I *really* like *chocolate* cake",
        "msgtype": "m.text",
        "com.example.extension_property": "chocolate"
    }
}

Note that the msgtype property of m.room.message events need not be the same as in the original event. For example, if a user intended to send a message beginning with "/me", but their client sends an m.emote event instead, they could edit the message to send be an m.text event as they had originally intended.

Validity of message edit events

Some message edit events are defined to be invalid. To be considered valid, all of the following criteria must be satisfied:

  • The replacement and original events must have the same type.
  • Neither the replacement nor original events can be state events (ie, neither may have a state_key).
  • The original event must not, itself, have a rel_type of m.replace.
  • The original event and replacement event must have the same sender.
  • The replacement event (once decrypted, if appropriate) must have an m.new_content property.

The original event and replacement event must also have the same room_id, as required by the relationships section of the Client-Server API specification.

If any of these criteria are not satisfied, implementations should ignore the replacement event (the content of the original should not be replaced, and the edit should not be included in the server-side aggregation).

Server behaviour

Server-side aggregation of m.replace relationships

Note that there can be multiple events with an m.replace relationship to a given event (for example, if an event is edited multiple times). These should be aggregated by the homeserver.

The format of the aggregation for m.replace simply gives gives the event_id, origin_server_ts, and sender of the most recent replacement event (as determined by origin_server_ts, falling back to a lexicographic ordering of event_id).

This aggregation is bundled into the unsigned/m.relations property of any event that is the target of an m.replace relationship. For example:

{
  "event_id": "$original_event_id",
  // ...
  "unsigned": {
    "m.relations": {
      "m.replace": {
        "event_id": "$latest_edit_event_id",
        "origin_server_ts": 1649772304313,
        "sender": "@editing_user:localhost"
      }
    }
  }
}

If the original event is redacted, any m.replace relationship should not be bundled with it (whether or not any subsequent edits are themselves redacted). Note that this behaviour is specific to the m.replace relationship.

Server-side replacement of content

Whenever an m.replace is to be bundled with an event as above, the server should also modify the content of the original event according to the m.new_content of the most recent edit (determined as above).

An exception applies to GET /_matrix/client/v3/rooms/{roomId}/event/{eventId}, which should return the unmodified event (though the relationship should still be bundled, as described above).

The endpoints where this behaviour takes place is the same as those where aggregations are bundled, with the exception of /room/{roomId}/event/{eventId}. This includes:

  • GET /rooms/{roomId}/messages
  • GET /rooms/{roomId}/context/{eventId}
  • GET /rooms/{roomId}/relations/{eventId}
  • GET /rooms/{roomId}/relations/{eventId}/{relType}
  • GET /rooms/{roomId}/relations/{eventId}/{relType}/{eventType}
  • GET /sync when the relevant section has a limited value of true
  • POST /search for any matching events under room_events.

Client behaviour

Clients can often ignore message edit events, since any events the server returns via the C-S API will be updated by the server to account for subsequent edits.

However, clients should apply the replacement themselves when the server is unable to do so. This happens in the following situations:

  1. The client has already received and stored the original event before the message edit event arrives.

  2. The original event (and hence its replacement) are encrypted.

Client authors are reminded to take note of the requirements for Validity of message edit events, and to ignore any invalid edit events that may be received.

Permalinks

Permalinks to edited events should capture the event ID that the creator of the permalink is viewing at that point (which might be a message edit event).

The client viewing the permalink should resolve this ID to the original event ID, and then display the most recent version of that event.

Redactions

When a message using a rel_type of m.replace is redacted, it removes that edit revision. This has little effect if there were subsequent edits, however if it was the most recent edit, the event is in effect reverted to its content before the redacted edit.

Redacting the original message in effect removes the message, including all subsequent edits, from the visible timeline. In this situation, homeservers will return an empty content for the original event as with any other redacted event. It must be noted that, although they are not immediately visible in Element, subsequent edits remain unredacted and can be seen via API calls. See Future considerations.

Edits of replies

Some particular constraints apply to events which replace a reply. In particular:

  • There should be no m.in_reply_to property in the the m.relates_to object, since it would be redundant (see Applying m.new_content above, which notes that the original event's m.relates_to is preserved), as well as being contrary to the spirit of MSC2674 which expects only one relationship per event.

  • m.new_content should not contain any "reply fallback", since it is assumed that any client which can handle edits can also display replies natively.

An example of an edit to a reply is as follows:

{
  "type": "m.room.message",
  "content": {
    "body": "> <@richvdh:sw1v.org> ab\n\n * ef",
    "msgtype": "m.text",
    "format": "org.matrix.custom.html",
    "formatted_body": "<mx-reply><blockquote><a href=\"https://matrix.to/#/!qOZKfwKPirAoSosXrf:matrix.org/$1652807718765kOVDf:sw1v.org?via=matrix.org&amp;via=sw1v.org\">In reply to</a> <a href=\"https://matrix.to/#/@richvdh:sw1v.org\">@richvdh:sw1v.org</a><br>ab</blockquote></mx-reply> * ef",
    "m.new_content": {
      "body": "ef",
      "msgtype": "m.text",
      "format": "org.matrix.custom.html",
      "formatted_body": "ef"
    },
    "m.relates_to": {
      "rel_type": "m.replace",
      "event_id": "$original_reply_event"
    }
  }
}

Future considerations

Ordering of edits

In future we may wish to consider ordering replacements (or relations in general) via a DAG rather than using origin_server_ts to determine ordering - particularly to mitigate potential abuse of edits applied by moderators. Whatever, care must be taken by the server to ensure that if there are multiple replacement events, the server must consistently choose the same one as all other servers.

Redaction of edits

It is highly unintuitive that redacting the original event leaves subsequent edits visible to curious eyes even though they are hidden from the timeline. This is considered a bug which this MSC makes no attempt to resolve. See also element-web#11978 and synapse#5594.

Edits to state events

There are various issues which would need to be resolved before edits to state events could be supported. In particular, we would need to consider how the semantically-meaningful fields of the content of a state event relate to m.new_content. Variation between implementations could easily lead to security problems (See element-web#21851 for example.)

Editing other users' events

There is a usecase for users with sufficient power-level to edit other peoples' events. For now, no attempt is made to support this. If it is supported in the future, we would need to find a way to make it clear in the timeline.