[ipxe-devel] uri_encode and special characters.

[Robin Smidsrød]

On 06.05.2015 02:08, Christian Nilsson wrote:
> On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 1:42 AM, Nicolas Sylvain <nsylvain at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'd like to propose adding "+" and "/" to the list of characters to encode
>> in the query string of a URL.
>>
>> There is already a comment that says that we should not encode "/", but I
>> think it might be wrong.
>>
>> According to the RFC (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986) the "/" is a
>> reserved character.  The "Special Characters in URLs" section of
>> http://www.skorks.com/2010/05/what-every-developer-should-know-about-urls/
>> touches on this a bit as well.
>>
>> This is biting me because I'm trying to fetch my boot image using a Google
>> Cloud Storage signed URL
>> (https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/access-control#Assembling-the-URL)
>> and it says :
>>
>> URLencode the signature you created. (The Base64 encoded signature may
>> contain characters not legal in URLs (specifically + and /). These values
>> must be replaced by safe encodings (%2B and %2F, respectively).
>>
>> Here's the patch, if you decide to accept it.
>>
>> Thank you!
>>
>> Nicolas
> 
> I agree that the current implementation is missing this, and more.
> Have started to add tests based on Robins
> https://gist.github.com/robinsmidsrod/9326960
> Those includes & and / add + to that and we got most of it.
> Also wants to have tests in place for base64 containing as you note +
> and / for params post data
> 
> What would be interesting is examples of fields and situations where
> these chars should not be encoded, for example is it an issue to
> encode everything in username and password?
> 
> By moving most to "always" it should be possible to simplify the code
> and still add functionality?
> 
> Unfortunately other things got in the way - so don't know when I can
> continue that work.

I just wanted to chime in and say that the URL-encoding and decoding has
been looked at recently and the :uristring settings type have been
brought back (HEAD commit as of a few days ago). Hopefully everything is
now working as it should, but report back if anything behaves in
unexpected ways for you.

-- Robin