Passing colons in query string in Apex - oracle

I have a link in an apex report which takes the user to different page, and it passes some values to the new page. The button is set to a url because there are too many items being passed, but I don't think that would matter anyway:
f?p=&APP_ID.:27:&SESSION.::&DEBUG.::P27_1,P27_2,P27_3,P27_4,P27_5:0,#1#,#2#,#3#,#NULL#
The #1#, etc. are columns being passed. Everything seems to work correctly except that the data being passed often contains a colon (:), which messes up Apex's built in colon structure by cutting off anything in the new page's item that happens after the colon (including the colon itself) as well as messing up any fields after that. For example: #2# has a colon in it, so P27_3, 4, and 5 will not be filled with values.
I've tried manually replacing the colon with a '%3a' (the url encoding for colon), but it doesn't seem to work.

Try using UTL_URL.ESCAPE() to escape URL special characters and UTL_URL.UNESCAPE() to un-escape them back.
You can also try APEX_UTIL.URL_ENCODE() but you need to use one or the other, i.e. either UTL or APEX_UTIL.

Related

(Grafana Table) ${__cell} containing an apostrophe/single quote breaks the Query String to Kibana

In Grafana I've got a table panel which contains some names (one each row), that, if clicked, open a new window on Kibana passing via URL the name the user clicked (${__cell}) in order to Drill-Down that particular name.
This use to works fine, but I'm facing a problem when then name contains a special character such as "Identita' Digitale" (without double quote): as you can see it contains an apostrophe/single quote that breaks the query so the Kibana's URL becomes uncomplete.
Try
${__cell:lucene}
instead of
${__cell}
All special characters should be escaped for Lucene query. Actually, you need URL encode for your case - you may try other advanced formatting options.
Doc: http://docs.grafana.org/reference/templating/#advanced-formatting-options
Another dirty hackish solution, use JS to urlencode link in the onclick event, add this string at the end of your link definiton in the Grafana:
" onclick="location.href=encodeURI(this);
So in full HTML it will create link:
<a href="<URL>" onclick="location.href=encodeURI(this);">...
Syntax in my example can be wrong, it may need some minor changes to work properly. You can use jQuery in theory.

bash: how to make a clickable link with query parameters?

I am trying to dump url on the terminal that needs to be clickable, and the url comes with a query parameter. For example --
google='https://www.google.com/search?q='
orgname='foo bar'
gsearch=$google\'$orgname\'
echo "details: $orgname ($gsearch)"
But the problem is that the clickable link totally omits everything after the q=, i.e. does not include the string 'foo bar', please see the image below --
How do I make a clickable link that includes the query (i.e. the whole url in the braces above)?
Please also note that I am adding quote in the search parameter since the it may contain spaces.
Single quotes are not valid in URLs. Use the URL encoding %27 instead:
google='https://www.google.com/search?q='
orgname='foo'
gsearch=$google%27$orgname%27
echo "details: $orgname ($gsearch)"
Note that it's the terminal and not your script that decides what's considered part of a URL for the purpose of selecting or clicking. The above results in
https://www.google.com/search?q=%27foo%27
which is more clickable in most terminals. The script can't specify what's the extent of the URL except through expressing it in such a standard way that each individual terminal emulator has a decent chance of recognizing it.
PS: I don't think Google cares about surrounding single quotes.

Processing form input in a Joomla component

I am creating a Joomla component and one of the pages contains a form with a text input for an email address.
When a < character is typed in the input field, that character and everything after is not showing up in the input.
I tried $_POST['field'] and JFactory::getApplication()->input->getCmd('field')
I also tried alternatives for getCmd like getVar, getString, etc. but no success.
E.g. John Doe <j.doe#mail.com> returns only John Doe.
When the < is left out, like John Doe j.doe#mail.com> the value is coming in correctly.
What can I do to also have the < character in the posted variable?
BTW. I had to use & lt; in this question to display it as I want it. This form suffers from the same problem!!
You actually need to set the filtering that you want when you grab the input. Otherwise, you will get some heavy filtering. (Typically, I will also lose # symbols.)
Replace this line:
JFactory::getApplication()->input->getCmd('field');
with this line:
JFactory::getApplication()->input->getRaw('field');
The name after the get part of the function is the filtering that you will use. Cmd strips everything but alphanumeric characters and ., -, and _. String will run through the html clean tags feature of joomla and depending on your settings will clean out <>. (That usually doesn't happen for me, but my settings are generally pretty open to the point of no filtering on super admins and such.
getRaw should definitely work, but note that there is no filtering at all, which can open security holes in your application.
The default text filter trims html from the input for your field. You should set the property
filter="raw"
in your form's manifest (xml) file, and then use getRaw() to retrieve the value. getCmd removes the non-alphanumeric characters.

Freemarker Interpolation stripping whitespace?

I seem to be having issues with leading/trailing spaces in textareas!
If the last user has typed values into a textarea with leading/trailing spaces across multiple lines, they all disappear with exception to one space in the beginning & end.
Example:
If the textbox had the following lines: (quotes present only to help illustrate spaces)
" 3.0"
" 2.2 "
"0.3 "
it would be saved in the backend as
"<textarea id=... > 3.0/n 2.2 /n0.3 </textarea>"
My template (for this part) is fairly straightforward (entire template, not as easy...): ${label} ${textField}
When I load up the values again, I notice getTextField() is properly getting the desired string, quoted earlier... But when I look at the html page it's showing
" 3.0"
"2.2"
"0.3 "
And of course when "View Sourcing" it doesn't have the string seen in getTextField()
What I've tried:
Ensure the backend has setWhitespaceStripping(false); set
Adding the <#ftl strip_whitespace=false>
Adding the <#nl> on the same line as ${textField}
No matter what I've tried, I'm not having luck keeping the spaces after the interpolation.
Any help would be very appreciated!
Maybe you are inside a <#compress>...</#compress> (or <#compress>...</#compress>) block. Those filter the whole output on runtime and reduce whitespace regardless where it comes from. I recommend not using this directive. It makes the output somewhat smaller, but it has runtime overhead, and can corrupt output in cases like this.
FreeMarker interpolations don't remove whitespace from the inserted value, or change the value in any way. Except, if you are lexically inside an <#escape ...>....</#escape>, block, that will be automatically applied. But it's unlikely that you have an escaping expression that corrupts whitespace. But to be sure., you can check if there's any <#escape ...> in the same template file (no need to check elsewhere, as it's not a runtime directive).
strip_whitespace and #nt are only removing white-space during parsing (that's before execution), so they are unrelated.
You can also check if the whitespace is still there in the inserted value before inserting like this:
${textField?replace(" ", "[S]")?replace("\n", "[N]")?replace("\t", "[T]")}
If you find that they were already removed that probably means that they were already removed before the value was put into the data-model. So then if wasn't FreeMarker.

Bug in Chrome, or Stupidity in User? Sanitising inputs on forms?

I've written a more detailed post about this on my blog at:
http://idisposable.co.uk/2010/07/chrome-are-you-sanitising-my-inputs-without-my-permission/
but basically, I have a string which is:
||abcdefg
hijklmn
opqrstu
vwxyz
||
the pipes I've added to give an indiciation of where the string starts and ends, in particular note the final carriage return on the last line.
I need to put this into a hidden form variable to post off to a supplier.
In basically, any browser except chrome, I get the following:
<input type="hidden" id="pareqMsg" value="abcdefg
hijklmn
opqrstu
vwxyz
" />
but in chrome, it seems to apply a .Trim() or something else that gives me:
<input type="hidden" id="pareqMsg" value="abcdefg
hijklmn
opqrstu
vwxyz" />
Notice it's cut off the last carriage return. These carriage returns (when Encoded) come up as %0A if that helps.
Basically, in any browser except chrome, the whole thing just works and I get the desired response from the third party. In Chrome, I get an 'invalid pareq' message (which suggests to me that those last carriage returns are important to the supplier).
Chrome version is 5.0.375.99
Am I going mad, or is this a bug?
Cheers,
Terry
You can't rely on form submission to preserve the exact character data you include in the value of a hidden field. I've had issues in the past with Firefox converting CRLF (\r\n) sequences into bare LFs, and your experience shows that Chrome's behaviour is similarly confusing.
And it turns out, it's not really a bug.
Remember that what you're supplying here is an HTML attribute value - strictly, the HTML 4 DTD defines the value attribute of the <input> element as of type CDATA. The HTML spec has this to say about CDATA attribute values:
User agents should interpret attribute values as follows:
Replace character entities with characters,
Ignore line feeds,
Replace each carriage return or tab with a single space.
User agents may ignore leading and trailing white space in CDATA attribute values (e.g., " myval " may be interpreted as "myval"). Authors should not declare attribute values with leading or trailing white space.
So whitespace within the attribute value is subject to a number of user agent transformations - conforming browsers should apparently be discarding all your linefeeds, not only the trailing one - so Chrome's behaviour is indeed buggy, but in the opposite direction to the one you want.
However, note that the browser is also expected to replace character entities with characters - which suggests you ought to be able to encode your CRs and LFs as 
 and
, and even spaces as , eliminating any actual whitespace characters from your value field altogether.
However, browser compliance with these SGML parsing rules is, as you've found, patchy, so your mileage may certainly vary.
Confirmed it here. It trims trailing CRLFs, they don't get parsed into the browser's DOM (I assume for all HTML attributes).
If you append CRLF with script, e.g.
var pareqMsg = document.forms[0]['pareqMsg']
if (/\r\n$/.test(pareqMsg.value) == false)
pareqMsg.value += '\r\n';
...they do get maintained and POSTed back to the server. Although the hidden <textarea> idea suggested by Gaby might be easier!
Normally in an input box you cannot enter (by keyboard) a newline.. so perhaps chrome enforces this even for embedded, through the attributes, values ..
try using a textarea (with display:none)..

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