File system warnings for moves of shared content items

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11645235-B2
Application number	US-202217824590-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	May 25, 2022
Priority date	Dec 29, 2016
Publication date	May 9, 2023
Grant date	May 9, 2023

Abstract

The present technology operates in an application layer of an operating system on a client device of a content management system to monitor for changes to shared content items that are likely unintentional—for example the change might move a content item out of a shared space, or otherwise remove the shared content item from access by other users. The present technology can detect a content item change event on a client device, compare a source file system path for the content item change event with a destination file system path for the content item change event to determine a canonical move causing the content item change event, determine that the canonical move was likely unintentional; and display a notification informing the user that a content item change that was likely unintentional was detected and then allow the user to either confirm or deny (undo) the detected change.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. At least one non-transitory computer readable medium comprising instructions, the instructions, when executed by a computing system, cause the computing system to:
detect a content item change event, wherein the content item change event is associated with a user account of a content management system and wherein the content item change event pertains to a shared content item accessible to at least one other user account of the content management system;
compare a source file system path for the content item change event with a destination file system path for the content item change event to determine that the content item change event causes the shared content item to become unavailable to the at least one other user account based on the source file system path being shared with the at least one other user account and the destination file system path not being shared with the at least one other user account;
based on the content item change event causing the shared content item to become unavailable to the at least one other user account, provide a notification that informs the user account associated with the content item change event that the content item change event will result in making the shared content item unavailable to the at least one other user account; and
receive a user interaction corresponding with selectable options in the notification, wherein when a selection of an undo option is received, return the shared content item to the source file system path, and when a selection of a continue option is received, synchronize the content item change event with the content management system.

2. The at least one non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the notification is provided to a client device to be presented at a client application, wherein the client device accesses the content management system via the client application.

3. The at least one non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1 , wherein processing the content item change event includes synchronizing the content item change event between the content management system and a client device.

4. The at least one non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the instructions are executed in an application layer on the computing system.

5. The at least one non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the instructions to detect the content item change event include detecting that the content item change event is a move event.

6. The at least one non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1 , including instructions to:
detect a file system path for a location within a file system that the content item change event occurred;
determine whether the content item change event describes the source file system path or the destination file system path of the shared content item; and
when the content item change event describes the source file system path, learn the destination file system path, and when the content item change event describes the destination file system path, learn the source file system path.

7. The at least one non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 6 , wherein the destination file system path is learned by the computing system by executing the instructions to:
lookup the source file system path in a storage index to obtain a unique identifier for the shared content item that used to be stored at the source file system path; and
query the file system to learn a current location of a content item having the unique identifier, the current location being the destination file system path.

8. The at least one non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 6 , wherein the source file system path is learned by the computing system by executing the instructions to:
determine a unique identifier for the shared content item stored at the destination file system path; and
lookup the unique identifier in a storage index to obtain a most recent known path storing a content item having the unique identifier, the most recent known path being the source file system path.

9. The at least one non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the instructions are effective to further cause the computing system to:
evaluate the source file system path, wherein the source file system path may contain a plurality of levels of content items, starting with a lowest level, and determine whether the shared content item at an evaluated level of the source file system path is currently stored at a location identified by the source file system path;
when the shared content item at the evaluated level of the source file system path is not currently stored at the location identified by the source file system path, iterate the evaluation of the source file system path at a progressively higher level content item in the source file system path; and
when the shared content item at the evaluated level of the source file system path is currently stored at the location identified by the source file system path, determine that a last content item that was determined to not be currently stored at the location identified by the source file system path is the shared content item that was moved.

10. The at least one non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the source file system path for the content item change event is associated with a shared directory and the destination file system path for the content item change event is associated with an unshared directory.

11. The at least one non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the content item change event is a content item addition describing an addition of the shared content item to the destination file system path, or content item deletion describing a deletion of a content item from the source file system path, and wherein the instructions are effective to cause the computing system to:
determine that the content item deletion or the content item addition is part of a content item move when the source file system path does not match the destination file system path for the content item.

12. A system comprising:
one or more processors; and
at least one non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having stored therein instructions which, when executed by the one or more processors, cause an email service executing on a server to:
detect a content item change event, wherein the content item change event is associated with a user account of a content management system and wherein the content item change event pertains to a shared content item accessible to at least one other user account of the content management system;
compare a source file system path for the content item change event with a destination file system path for the content item change event to determine that the content item change event causes the shared content item to become unavailable to the at least one other user account based on the source file system path being shared with the at least one other user account and the destination file system path not being shared with the at least one other user account;
based on the content item change event causing the shared content item to become unavailable to the at least one other user account, provide a notification that informs the user account associated with the content item change event that the content item change event will result in making the shared content item unavailable to the at least one other user account; and
receive a user interaction corresponding with selectable options in the notification, wherein when a selection of an undo option is received, return the shared content item to the source fil

Assignees

• Dropbox Inc

Inventors

• Newhouse Benjamin Zeis
• Sydell Alex
• Cong Shi

Classifications

• G06F21/52

  during program execution, e.g. stack integrity {; Preventing unwanted data erasure; Buffer overflow} · CPC title

• G06F16/1734 Primary

  Details of monitoring file system events, e.g. by the use of hooks, filter drivers, logs · CPC title

• G06F21/6218

  to a system of files or objects, e.g. local or distributed file system or database · CPC title

• G06F21/554

  involving event detection and direct action · CPC title