[Catalyst] Slash characters in a path argument

[Tomas Doran]

On 27 Sep 2011, at 15:41, Ian Wells wrote:

> I have a string I want to use as one argument to a controller.  It's  
> user-sourced and occasionally has slashes in.
>
> I use this as
>
>     $c->uri_for('/controller/action', 'string/with/slashes');
>
> (done in TT, as it happens, but the results are the same)
>
>
> I'd like that argument to be the first argument of my controller.   
> uri_for doesn't encode the slashed string, so that gives me / 
> controller/action/string/with/slashes, and misses my one-argument  
> action.

Yes, this is as we rely on being able to just concatenate path parts  
for uri_for.

However if you supply uri_for with an action object (or use  
uri_for_action), then encoding will happen as expected in CaptureArgs  
and Args.

> If I URI-encode it, things work better in the Catalyst webserver,  
> <app>_server.pl
>
> $c->uri_for('/controller/action', 'string%2Fwith%2Fslashes');
>
> The url is then /controller/action/string%2Fwith%2Fslashes and the  
> action is found; Catalyst even decodes it, and we're laughing.
>
> However, this leads to weird things happening.  If you run under  
> lighttpd/fastcgi, it thoughtfully decodes the slashes for you, which  
> brings us back to the first case: it misses my 1-argument controller  
> and gets me a 404.  Catalyst reports:
>
> [debug] "GET" request for "content/series/David%20Audley%20/%20Jack 
> %20Butler:%20Chronological%20Order" from "xx.xx.xx.xx"
> [debug] Path is "/"
> [debug] Arguments are "content/series/David Audley / Jack Butler:  
> Chronological Order"

You haven't given us any of the information needed to help you debug  
this, so I can't help.

This _does_ work (as I'm using it).

> Now, one answer to this is to encode slashes in such strings as non- 
> uri-encoding.  Another is to have special-case actions that can have  
> slashed arguments in them.  A third would be to change lighttpd's  
> behaviour - there's a bug open for exactly that but no activity on  
> it; also, I suspect other webservers behave similarly...
>
>
> Has anyone come up against this before?  Any tips?

Start with the documentation for use_request_uri_for_path => 1 in  
Catalyst.pm

If that doesn't help, hop onto irc (or reply to this mail) and paste  
some info like the startup debug and full request debug please?

Cheers
t0m