Asking somebody in

Status: Accepted · Audience: Operator · Area: N — Companion

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Purpose

D6 exists so an operator never learns the media server’s user administration. The moment it is for is a person on the sofa asking how they get on — and the thing the operator has in their hand at that moment is a phone.

N9 already says what an invitation must state before it is sent: what it grants, when it lapses, and whether it works away from home. N13 says what taking somebody out must say. This page is the acts between them: inviting, handing the invitation over, letting somebody set a new password, and asking again — each of which the stack performs over the same route the other surfaces use.

Behaviour

Inviting is offered here, in the stack’s terms

A person is named, and given libraries, an age limit and a choice about material the media server has no rating for. Those are the whole decision, in the words the stack uses for them, and nothing about how the media server stores any of it is asked for or shown.

The invitation is the stack’s address, handed over by the operator

What the person needs is one address and how long it stands. The stack builds the address from what the machine is called on the network, and the app hands that address over as it came — as text, and as a code another phone can scan from this one’s screen. It builds no address of its own, and it sends nothing itself: the operator hands it over through the device’s own sharing, to whomever they choose.

The stack also gives every invitation the address that turns it down (D6-R15, G5-R14). The text handed over carries it after the invitation’s own address, as the stack gave it, so a person who does not want the account can refuse it without asking the operator. Where the stack mints a join link (D6-R22), the text carries it too, so somebody with the app is taken straight into it. Each address is offered as a code of its own, labelled with what it opens, and the first code is the join link where there is one, otherwise the invitation’s own address (N21-R11). Where the stack says why there is no join link, that sentence travels with the invitation (N21-R12).

An address that is a number can stop working when a router hands the number to something else, and the stack says so with the invitation. That caution goes wherever the address goes.

What was found is an answer, and four answers are not one

Offering somebody an account twice is ordinary. The stack says what it found: a new account made, an invitation already standing, a person who has already joined, or a password taken off an account that was already theirs. Each means a different thing to say to the person, and none of them is a failure. Already joined shown as invited sends somebody a link to an account they have been using for a year.

Watching and asking can arrive separately

The account a person watches with and the one they ask with live on two services, and the second can be down while the first is not. Where the stack made the first and could not yet tell the second, the person can watch and cannot yet ask, and the app says exactly that. It is neither done nor failed: the next run finishes it without anybody having to remember.

A new password is theirs to choose

Where somebody has lost the way into their account, the stack takes the password off and hands back an invitation to send, and the person chooses the next one at the media server. The app offers that act. It never shows, sets or carries a password, because the operator is not supposed to know one (D6-R2).

An account that runs the media server is not a household member’s

The stack refuses to take the password off the account it signs in with, and the app shows that refusal with its reason rather than hiding the person from the list.

What lapsed on the way past is said, in two words

An invitation stands for a window, and one nobody claimed in time is withdrawn on the way past: the next invitation the stack is asked for sweeps it, and a rehearsed one names what that sweep would take. What becomes of the account depends on whose it was. An offer nobody ever took up is removed, and the stack names it under withdrawn. An account somebody had been in, reset and not claimed again in time, is switched off and kept, because removing it would take what they watched with it; the stack names it under suspended, and offering it again or reissuing it switches it back on.

Both are invitations the stack withdrew, which is what N21-R10 asks to be shown. They arrive on the answer to invite, and are shown with it. An operator who invited somebody last week and hears nothing learns from this whether the account is gone or waiting to be reissued.

A rehearsed invitation made nothing

As everywhere (N6-R1). Here it decides whether somebody has an account.

States

Edge cases

• An invitation asked for twice in an evening. Waiting is shown, with the same address, and not a second invitation.
• Invited while the request service is down. Made and not yet asking together, shown as both.
• A person the stack cannot find by that name. The refusal names the name that was asked for.
• Handing over declined by the platform’s sharing. Nothing was sent, and the address is still on screen to hand over another way.
• A reset that lapsed. The account is switched off and kept, and is shown as suspended on the answer it arrived on, apart from an offer that was removed.

Requirements

Notes

What the contract carries. invitation answers the invite and reissue actions; invite takes a name, libraries, an age limit and a word about unrated material, and reissue takes a name.

D6-R13 is not a row here. An offer nobody claimed is withdrawn, and withdrawal removes the account, so there is no member left to re-issue to without naming their access again. reissue makes an existing account claimable. Asking again after a lapse is invite, which takes the access afresh — and nothing on the wire keeps what the lapsed invitation granted to offer back. A lapsed reset is the exception: its account is kept, switched off, and reissue switches it back on.

Related

• N1 — parity, and what the app may claim
• N9 — what an invitation states before it is sent
• N13 — taking somebody out
• N3 — what the person sees once they are in
• N4 — the device’s own sharing, and what a notification may say
• D6 — household identity and invitations