Deprecated: Shutdown room API

The old Shutdown room API is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. See the new Delete Room API for more details.

Shuts down a room, preventing new joins and moves local users and room aliases automatically to a new room. The new room will be created with the user specified by the new_room_user_id parameter as room administrator and will contain a message explaining what happened. Users invited to the new room will have power level -10 by default, and thus be unable to speak. The old room's power levels will be changed to disallow any further invites or joins.

The local server will only have the power to move local user and room aliases to the new room. Users on other servers will be unaffected.

API

You will need to authenticate with an access token for an admin user.

URL

POST /_synapse/admin/v1/shutdown_room/{room_id}

URL Parameters

room_id - The ID of the room (e.g !someroom:example.com)

JSON Body Parameters

new_room_user_id - Required. A string representing the user ID of the user that will admin the new room that all users in the old room will be moved to.
room_name - Optional. A string representing the name of the room that new users will be invited to.
message - Optional. A string containing the first message that will be sent as new_room_user_id in the new room. Ideally this will clearly convey why the original room was shut down.

If not specified, the default value of room_name is "Content Violation Notification". The default value of message is "Sharing illegal content on othis server is not permitted and rooms in violation will be blocked."

Response Parameters

kicked_users - An integer number representing the number of users that were kicked.
failed_to_kick_users - An integer number representing the number of users that were not kicked.
local_aliases - An array of strings representing the local aliases that were migrated from the old room to the new.
new_room_id - A string representing the room ID of the new room.

Example

Request:

POST /_synapse/admin/v1/shutdown_room/!somebadroom%3Aexample.com

{
    "new_room_user_id": "@someuser:example.com",
    "room_name": "Content Violation Notification",
    "message": "Bad Room has been shutdown due to content violations on this server. Please review our Terms of Service."
}

Response:

{
    "kicked_users": 5,
    "failed_to_kick_users": 0,
    "local_aliases": ["#badroom:example.com", "#evilsaloon:example.com],
    "new_room_id": "!newroomid:example.com",
},

Undoing room shutdowns

Note: This guide may be outdated by the time you read it. By nature of room shutdowns being performed at the database level, the structure can and does change without notice.

First, it's important to understand that a room shutdown is very destructive. Undoing a shutdown is not as simple as pretending it never happened - work has to be done to move forward instead of resetting the past. In fact, in some cases it might not be possible to recover at all:

If the room was invite-only, your users will need to be re-invited.
If the room no longer has any members at all, it'll be impossible to rejoin.
The first user to rejoin will have to do so via an alias on a different server.

With all that being said, if you still want to try and recover the room:

For safety reasons, shut down Synapse.
In the database, run DELETE FROM blocked_rooms WHERE room_id = '!example:example.org';
- For caution: it's recommended to run this in a transaction: BEGIN; DELETE ...;, verify you got 1 result, then COMMIT;.
- The room ID is the same one supplied to the shutdown room API, not the Content Violation room.
Restart Synapse.

You will have to manually handle, if you so choose, the following:

Aliases that would have been redirected to the Content Violation room.
Users that would have been booted from the room (and will have been force-joined to the Content Violation room).
Removal of the Content Violation room if desired.

Synapse