Item2205: topicExists gets confused by illegal topic names

Calling edit with a non wiki word and with onlywikiname set fails, but with the wrong error message.

Instead of not_wikiword it returns topic_exists - on my installation anyway.

The "WebHome" topic already exists.

On foswiki.org it also fails, with topic_access, but I'm sure this is a different manifestation of the same problem.

For eg, visiting

http://foswiki.org/bin/edit/Sandbox/?topic=Test+Test&onlywikiname=on&onlynewtopic=on

Gives

Access check on Sandbox failed. Action "CHANGE": access not allowed on topic.

Adding some debug statements shows that topicExists is being set to 1, even though the topic doesn't exist. If I pass a wikiWord, it works just fine.

-- BenAveling - 04 Oct 2009

This is due to the check performed in Foswiki.pm, where if the topic name is invalid it defaults to WebHome to protect the rest of the code.

Confirmed.

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It's not that the topic is not a WikiWord, it's that it contains a character (a space) that invalidates it. But the effect is still the same, and has often related in accidental edits to WebHome as well.

-- GeorgeClark - 16 Mar 2011

-- CrawfordCurrie - 27 Jun 2010