[xwiki-devs] [Proposal] Disallow / and \ in page names by default
Hi devs, Because of tomcat and because tomcat is by far the most used container for xwiki and because we also bundle tomcat in the debian and docker dsitributions, I think we should disallow / and \ in page names by default. It's causing too much trouble for users. We keep having users posting problems and for one user who post a problem there are 100 who don't. The latest one: https://forum.xwiki.org/t/please-help-broken-link-routing-cannot-open-page-f... Implementation idea: * Offer an extension point in the create page UI to allow plugging some cleaning algorithm * Provide the \ and / cleaning algorithm by default * Handle backward compat. Find ways to not break existing users who are having / and \ in page names. For example we could imagine a property in xwiki.properties that we would set to point to the hint of the / and \ cleaner component. Thus existing users would need to voluntarily upgrade their xwiki.properties to have it if they want it. We would need to provide some script to convert existing pages with / and \ too probably. WDYT? Thanks -Vincent
On 22 Feb 2019, at 09:59, Vincent Massol <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi devs,
Because of tomcat and because tomcat is by far the most used container for xwiki and because we also bundle tomcat in the debian and docker dsitributions,
Re docker and debian we already set the proper config for Tomcat so the issue is with all users not using those distributions, which represents a sizable proportion (around 25-30%). I believe almost 100% of those are having the problem at some point. Thanks -Vincent
I think we should disallow / and \ in page names by default. It's causing too much trouble for users. We keep having users posting problems and for one user who post a problem there are 100 who don't.
The latest one: https://forum.xwiki.org/t/please-help-broken-link-routing-cannot-open-page-f...
Implementation idea: * Offer an extension point in the create page UI to allow plugging some cleaning algorithm * Provide the \ and / cleaning algorithm by default * Handle backward compat. Find ways to not break existing users who are having / and \ in page names. For example we could imagine a property in xwiki.properties that we would set to point to the hint of the / and \ cleaner component. Thus existing users would need to voluntarily upgrade their xwiki.properties to have it if they want it. We would need to provide some script to convert existing pages with / and \ too probably.
WDYT?
Thanks -Vincent
Hi devs,
Because of tomcat and because tomcat is by far the most used container for xwiki and because we also bundle tomcat in the debian and docker dsitributions, I think we should disallow / and \ in page names by default. It's causing too much trouble for users. We keep having users posting problems and for one user who post a problem there are 100 who don't.
The latest one: https://forum.xwiki.org/t/please-help-broken-link-routing-cannot-open-page-f...
+1 for me for the stripping of slashes. Even if configured properly there is a problem with tomcat: if you create a page e.g. in the Sandbox with a title of "Page A / B", this creates a page with the reference "Sandbox.Page A . B.WebHome", and you get an "empty" intermediate space. As users mostly see titles in the current XWiki version, it should not matter to them what happens to the page name.
Implementation idea: * Offer an extension point in the create page UI to allow plugging some cleaning algorithm * Provide the \ and / cleaning algorithm by default * Handle backward compat. Find ways to not break existing users who are having / and \ in page names. For example we could imagine a property in xwiki.properties that we would set to point to the hint of the / and \ cleaner component. Thus existing users would need to voluntarily upgrade their xwiki.properties to have it if they want it. We would need to provide some script to convert existing pages with / and \ too probably.
WDYT?
About backwards compatibility, I do not get the point. What will break for users who have already existing pages? As long as the cleaning algorithm only runs on newly created pages there should not be any bw/compat problem. If they really want no cleaning, we can provide them with a property which contains the characters to be scrapped from the name with a default value of '/\', and if they do not want this, they can set this property to an empty value. Or what am I missing here? Best, Clemens
Thanks -Vincent
P.S. As a side note, when using MySQL creating spaces with a trailing whitespace seem to cause some odd problems, too. I have seen at least one occurrence of an entry in the xwikispaces with no corresponding entries in xwikidoc. This causes an entry in the navigation tree which leads to a non-existing page and no good way to get rid of it from a users point of view. I have not figured out how to reproduce the problem, unfortunately. (For the issue with trailing spaces try "select 'x' = 'x ', 'x' like 'x '; " and read https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/char.html )
Hi Clemens,
On 22 Feb 2019, at 22:31, Clemens Robbenhaar <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi devs,
Because of tomcat and because tomcat is by far the most used container for xwiki and because we also bundle tomcat in the debian and docker dsitributions, I think we should disallow / and \ in page names by default. It's causing too much trouble for users. We keep having users posting problems and for one user who post a problem there are 100 who don't.
The latest one: https://forum.xwiki.org/t/please-help-broken-link-routing-cannot-open-page-f...
+1 for me for the stripping of slashes. Even if configured properly there is a problem with tomcat: if you create a page e.g. in the Sandbox with a title of "Page A / B", this creates a page with the reference "Sandbox.Page A . B.WebHome", and you get an "empty" intermediate space.
I’ve just tested with the XWiki Docker image 10.11.3, where Tomcat is correctly configured and it works as it’s supposed to:
As users mostly see titles in the current XWiki version, it should not matter to them what happens to the page name.
Implementation idea: * Offer an extension point in the create page UI to allow plugging some cleaning algorithm * Provide the \ and / cleaning algorithm by default * Handle backward compat. Find ways to not break existing users who are having / and \ in page names. For example we could imagine a property in xwiki.properties that we would set to point to the hint of the / and \ cleaner component. Thus existing users would need to voluntarily upgrade their xwiki.properties to have it if they want it. We would need to provide some script to convert existing pages with / and \ too probably.
WDYT?
About backwards compatibility, I do not get the point. What will break for users who have already existing pages? As long as the cleaning algorithm only runs on newly created pages there should not be any bw/compat problem.
Yes you’re right. But what’s important is to not change the behavior: if they were using “/“ and “\” in page name we shouldn’t break them and they should continue to do so unless they choose not to. However for new users we can configure them to filter page names by default. Hence my proposal about the new config property in xwiki.properties. When you uprgade you’ll decide if you want to merge it or not and if not you’ll continue to get the same behavior as before.
If they really want no cleaning, we can provide them with a property which contains the characters to be scrapped from the name with a default value of '/\', and if they do not want this, they can set this property to an empty value.
I prefer the implementation that I mentioned based on a component role and provide the hint in the config. It not allows the 2 use cases mentioned above but also any other type of custom use cases (other characters to strip, different logic, like force all creations under a given page, etc). The idea would be to take the reference as input and clean it and generate another reference as output (and display the cleaned version to the user somehow so that there’s no surprise - display the value that’ll be used as a form field hint for ex).
Or what am I missing here?
Best, Clemens
Thanks -Vincent
P.S. As a side note, when using MySQL creating spaces with a trailing whitespace seem to cause some odd problems, too. I have seen at least one occurrence of an entry in the xwikispaces with no corresponding entries in xwikidoc. This causes an entry in the navigation tree which leads to a non-existing page and no good way to get rid of it from a users point of view.
Yeah just tested and it worked fine for me (the URL is http://localhost:8080/bin/view/Test%20/ ).
I have not figured out how to reproduce the problem, unfortunately.
(For the issue with trailing spaces try "select 'x' = 'x ', 'x' like 'x '; " and read https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/char.html )
Vaguely rings a bell. Would be great to open a jira issue if you can reproduce the issue with the query. Thanks -Vincent
Hi Vincent,
Hi Clemens,
Hi devs,
Because of tomcat and because tomcat is by far the most used container for xwiki and because we also bundle tomcat in the debian and docker dsitributions, I think we should disallow / and \ in page names by default. It's causing too much trouble for users. We keep having users posting problems and for one user who post a problem there are 100 who don't.
The latest one: https://forum.xwiki.org/t/please-help-broken-link-routing-cannot-open-page-f... +1 for me for the stripping of slashes. Even if configured properly there is a problem with tomcat: if you create a page e.g. in the Sandbox with a title of "Page A / B", this creates a page with the reference "Sandbox.Page A . B.WebHome", and you get an "empty" intermediate space. I’ve just tested with the XWiki Docker image 10.11.3, where Tomcat is correctly configured and it works as it’s supposed to:
Interesting. I run into this issue on a regular basis with the standard Debian package, but without docker (so one gets the default Debian tomcat, which needs configuration tweaks anyway). It seems I miss something that is configured in the docker image; but this is not documented at https://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Documentation/AdminGuide/Installation/I... unless I missed it there, too. (Or it is caused by having apache httpd in front of it.) I need to check this - but nothing relevant for the discussion here.
As users mostly see titles in the current XWiki version, it should not matter to them what happens to the page name.
Implementation idea: * Offer an extension point in the create page UI to allow plugging some cleaning algorithm * Provide the \ and / cleaning algorithm by default * Handle backward compat. Find ways to not break existing users who are having / and \ in page names. For example we could imagine a property in xwiki.properties that we would set to point to the hint of the / and \ cleaner component. Thus existing users would need to voluntarily upgrade their xwiki.properties to have it if they want it. We would need to provide some script to convert existing pages with / and \ too probably.
WDYT? About backwards compatibility, I do not get the point. What will break for users who have already existing pages? As long as the cleaning algorithm only runs on newly created pages there should not be any bw/compat problem. Yes you’re right. But what’s important is to not change the behavior: if they were using “/“ and “\” in page name we shouldn’t break them and they should continue to do so unless they choose not to. However for new users we can configure them to filter page names by default.
Hence my proposal about the new config property in xwiki.properties. When you uprgade you’ll decide if you want to merge it or not and if not you’ll continue to get the same behavior as before.
If they really want no cleaning, we can provide them with a property which contains the characters to be scrapped from the name with a default value of '/\', and if they do not want this, they can set this property to an empty value. I prefer the implementation that I mentioned based on a component role and provide the hint in the config. It not allows the 2 use cases mentioned above but also any other type of custom use cases (other characters to strip, different logic, like force all creations under a given page, etc). The idea would be to take the reference as input and clean it and generate another reference as output (and display the cleaned version to the user somehow so that there’s no surprise - display the value that’ll be used as a form field hint for ex).
Maybe one can have both: the property for the hint to configure the component, and a property for the preinstalled component with the characters it removed from the page name. If the hint points to that component, it can be further customized with the latter property. But that is a detail; I can see the idea of a component selected via hint is more flexible, and no objections from my side to that approach. Best, Clemens
Or what am I missing here?
Best, Clemens
Thanks -Vincent P.S. As a side note, when using MySQL creating spaces with a trailing whitespace seem to cause some odd problems, too. I have seen at least one occurrence of an entry in the xwikispaces with no corresponding entries in xwikidoc. This causes an entry in the navigation tree which leads to a non-existing page and no good way to get rid of it from a users point of view. Yeah just tested and it worked fine for me (the URL is http://localhost:8080/bin/view/Test%20/ ).
I have not figured out how to reproduce the problem, unfortunately.
(For the issue with trailing spaces try "select 'x' = 'x ', 'x' like 'x '; " and read https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/char.html )
Vaguely rings a bell. Would be great to open a jira issue if you can reproduce the issue with the query.
Thanks -Vincent
P.S. yes, if I had been able to reproduce, I would have created an issue already ;)
On 23 Feb 2019, at 14:02, Clemens Robbenhaar <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Vincent,
Hi Clemens,
Hi devs,
Because of tomcat and because tomcat is by far the most used container for xwiki and because we also bundle tomcat in the debian and docker dsitributions, I think we should disallow / and \ in page names by default. It's causing too much trouble for users. We keep having users posting problems and for one user who post a problem there are 100 who don't.
The latest one: https://forum.xwiki.org/t/please-help-broken-link-routing-cannot-open-page-f... +1 for me for the stripping of slashes. Even if configured properly there is a problem with tomcat: if you create a page e.g. in the Sandbox with a title of "Page A / B", this creates a page with the reference "Sandbox.Page A . B.WebHome", and you get an "empty" intermediate space. I’ve just tested with the XWiki Docker image 10.11.3, where Tomcat is correctly configured and it works as it’s supposed to:
Interesting. I run into this issue on a regular basis with the standard Debian package, but without docker (so one gets the default Debian tomcat, which needs configuration tweaks anyway). It seems I miss something that is configured in the docker image; but this is not documented at https://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Documentation/AdminGuide/Installation/I... unless I missed it there, too. (Or it is caused by having apache httpd in front of it.) I need to check this - but nothing relevant for the discussion here.
All that is done is to configure https://github.com/xwiki-contrib/docker-xwiki/blob/master/template/tomcat/se... If you have an apache front end, then you also need this (documented at https://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Documentation/AdminGuide/Installation/I... ): https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/core.html#allowencodedslashes
As users mostly see titles in the current XWiki version, it should not matter to them what happens to the page name.
Implementation idea: * Offer an extension point in the create page UI to allow plugging some cleaning algorithm * Provide the \ and / cleaning algorithm by default * Handle backward compat. Find ways to not break existing users who are having / and \ in page names. For example we could imagine a property in xwiki.properties that we would set to point to the hint of the / and \ cleaner component. Thus existing users would need to voluntarily upgrade their xwiki.properties to have it if they want it. We would need to provide some script to convert existing pages with / and \ too probably.
WDYT? About backwards compatibility, I do not get the point. What will break for users who have already existing pages? As long as the cleaning algorithm only runs on newly created pages there should not be any bw/compat problem. Yes you’re right. But what’s important is to not change the behavior: if they were using “/“ and “\” in page name we shouldn’t break them and they should continue to do so unless they choose not to. However for new users we can configure them to filter page names by default.
Hence my proposal about the new config property in xwiki.properties. When you uprgade you’ll decide if you want to merge it or not and if not you’ll continue to get the same behavior as before.
If they really want no cleaning, we can provide them with a property which contains the characters to be scrapped from the name with a default value of '/\', and if they do not want this, they can set this property to an empty value. I prefer the implementation that I mentioned based on a component role and provide the hint in the config. It not allows the 2 use cases mentioned above but also any other type of custom use cases (other characters to strip, different logic, like force all creations under a given page, etc). The idea would be to take the reference as input and clean it and generate another reference as output (and display the cleaned version to the user somehow so that there’s no surprise - display the value that’ll be used as a form field hint for ex).
Maybe one can have both: the property for the hint to configure the component, and a property for the preinstalled component with the characters it removed from the page name. If the hint points to that component, it can be further customized with the latter property.
Yes, we can have a default component implementation (a “stripping” one that is customizable and which allows choosing stripping a set of characters).
But that is a detail; I can see the idea of a component selected via hint is more flexible, and no objections from my side to that approach.
Cool Thanks -Vincent
Best, Clemens
Or what am I missing here?
Best, Clemens
Thanks -Vincent P.S. As a side note, when using MySQL creating spaces with a trailing whitespace seem to cause some odd problems, too. I have seen at least one occurrence of an entry in the xwikispaces with no corresponding entries in xwikidoc. This causes an entry in the navigation tree which leads to a non-existing page and no good way to get rid of it from a users point of view. Yeah just tested and it worked fine for me (the URL is http://localhost:8080/bin/view/Test%20/ ).
I have not figured out how to reproduce the problem, unfortunately.
(For the issue with trailing spaces try "select 'x' = 'x ', 'x' like 'x '; " and read https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/char.html )
Vaguely rings a bell. Would be great to open a jira issue if you can reproduce the issue with the query.
Thanks -Vincent
P.S. yes, if I had been able to reproduce, I would have created an issue already ;)
participants (2)
-
Clemens Robbenhaar -
Vincent Massol