Item8281: Parameters does not work with special characters.

Special characters

= and &

scrambles list of parameters.

Example:

An input field value contains

= or &

evaluated by a template to create new topic with TopicCreatePlugin.

Input field values:

• VarA = ValueA
• VarB = Value=B
• VarC = ValueA&B

   * VarA = %URLPARAM{"VarA"}%
   * VarB = %URLPARAM{"VarB"}%
   * VarC = %URLPARAM{"VarC"}%

%TOPICCREATE{... parameters="VarA=ValueA&VarB=Value=B&VarC=ValueA&B"}
                                                   |             |
                                                   |        second break
                                              first break

Encoding does not work, because type url cannot be decode in created topic and other encodetypes uses

&

to encode special (

=

) characters.

-- MichaelGustavSimon - 16 Sep 2009

The problem is that the plugin uses = and & to separate the parameters. There is no way for it to know if it is meant to be part of the parameter or a separator.

Unfortunately I don't know of a way to fix this. Am open to suggestions

Note: the plugin uses Foswiki::Func::extractNameValuePair to get the parameters, so it is that function that cannot handle this. Therefore this same problem probably exists in many other plugins.

-- AndrewJones - 16 Sep 2009

Use another delimiter or method to evaluate parameters.

idea delimiter

< = delimiter for namevalue
> = delimiter for value assignment
%TOPICCREATE{... parameters="VarA>ValueA<VarB>Value=B<VarC>ValueA&B"}

I think gt and ls will be encoded out of the box?

idea method

%TOPICCREATE{... VarA="%URLPARAM{"VarA"}%" VarB="%URLPARAM{"VarB"}%" VarC="%URLPARAM{"VarC"}%"}%

-- MichaelGustavSimon - 16 Sep 2009

Your method idea looks like the best way, though we would need to keep backwards compatibility.

Will set to Confirmed. Not sure when/if I will have the time to do this, but its more than welcome to be picked up by anyone else.

-- AndrewJones - 16 Sep 2009

Maybe with following changes in TopicCreatePlugin?

line 70 ...

    my $legacy = 0;
    if ($theArgs =~ m/parameters/) {
       $legacy = 1;
    }
    my %parameters;
    my $refParameters = \%parameters;
    Foswiki::Plugins::TopicCreatePlugin::EnhancedFunctions::extractParameters($theArgs, $refParameters);

line 159 ...

if ($legacy==1) {
           next unless ( $parameters =~ m/$par=(.*?)($|&)/ );
           $passedPar = $1 || "";
           $text =~ s/%URLPARAM\{\"?$par\"?\}%/$passedPar/g;
        } else {
           $text =~ s/%URLPARAM\{\"?$par\"?\}%/$$refParameters{$par}/g;
        }

additional function

sub extractParameters {
   my ($topicCreateArgs, $refParameters) = @_;
   my @nameValuePairs = split(/\" /,$topicCreateArgs);
   foreach my $pair (@nameValuePairs) {
      my @nameValueTemp = split(/=/,$pair);
      $nameValueTemp[1] =~ s/\"//g;
      ${$refParameters}{$nameValueTemp[0]} = $nameValueTemp[1];
   }
   return $refParameters;
}

-- MichaelGustavSimon - 09 Jul 2010

I fixed it in a slightly different way. Please download the new version and let me know if you have any problems.

-- AndrewJones - 13 Jul 2010

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