[Building Sakai] new web content tool error

Wed Jul 30 09:32:57 PDT 2014

A "url with spaces" can be reproduced (have not tried using it with the 
web content tool) by typing into your address bar of your browser.

For example if I search for "sakai and apereo" (without quotes) into a 
google search, I get the following URL:

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=sakai+and+apereo

However, I can edit that and replace the value after the 'q' with

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=sakai and apereo

and I get the same resulting page.

---- Cris J H

On 07/30/2014 09:22 AM, Neal Caidin wrote:
> Hi Adam,
>
> Do you have any specific examples of URLs that have spaces?  We would
> need this in order to see if we can reproduce the problem. If we cannot
> reproduce it, no way to fix it.
>
> Thanks,
> Neal
>
>
>> Adam Marshall <mailto:adam.marshall at it.ox.ac.uk>
>> July 30, 2014 at 12:19 PM
>>
>> No specific system but I’m sure our users will find one! Either that
>> or they’ll type in a URL which contains spaces.
>>
>> adam
>>
>> --
>>
>> ** Note change of email address to adam.marshall at it.ox.ac.uk
>> <mailto:adam.marshall at it.ox.ac.uk> **
>>
>> Dr A C Marshall, WebLearn Service Manager, University of Oxford.
>>
>> IT Services, 13 Banbury Rd, Oxford. OX2 6NN.
>>
>> *From:*Sam Ottenhoff [mailto:ottenhoff at longsight.com]
>> *Sent:* 30 July 2014 17:12
>> *To:* Adam Marshall
>> *Cc:* sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org
>> *Subject:* Re: [Building Sakai] new web content tool error
>>
>> What system is providing your users with invalid characters?  How do
>> users arrive at links with spaces?
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> sakai-dev mailing list
>> sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org
>> http://collab.sakaiproject.org/mailman/listinfo/sakai-dev
>>
>> TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send email to
>> sakai-dev-unsubscribe at collab.sakaiproject.org with a subject of
>> "unsubscribe"
>> Sam Ottenhoff <mailto:ottenhoff at longsight.com>
>> July 30, 2014 at 12:11 PM
>>
>>
>>     Our users will go nuts (technical term) if they have to manually
>>     translate spaces to %20 in order to save a Web Content link.
>>
>>
>>
>> What system is providing your users with invalid characters?  How do
>> users arrive at links with spaces?
>> _______________________________________________
>> sakai-dev mailing list
>> sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org
>> http://collab.sakaiproject.org/mailman/listinfo/sakai-dev
>>
>> TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send email to
>> sakai-dev-unsubscribe at collab.sakaiproject.org with a subject of
>> "unsubscribe"
>> Adam Marshall <mailto:adam.marshall at it.ox.ac.uk>
>> July 30, 2014 at 11:55 AM
>>
>> I don’t dispute that URL should not contains spaces but the old Web
>> Content tool did accept them. I would imagine a good solution would be
>> to accept URLs with spaces but translate the space to %20 before
>> storing in the DB. The same goes for other disallowed characters.
>>
>> Our users will go nuts (technical term) if they have to manually
>> translate spaces to %20 in order to save a Web Content link.
>>
>> adam
>>
>> --
>>
>> ** Note change of email address to adam.marshall at it.ox.ac.uk
>> <mailto:adam.marshall at it.ox.ac.uk> **
>>
>> Dr A C Marshall, WebLearn Service Manager, University of Oxford.
>>
>> IT Services, 13 Banbury Rd, Oxford. OX2 6NN.
>>
>> *From:*Sam Ottenhoff [mailto:ottenhoff at longsight.com]
>> *Sent:* 30 July 2014 16:01
>> *To:* Adam Marshall
>> *Cc:* sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org
>> *Subject:* Re: [Building Sakai] new web content tool error
>>
>> Isn't a space invalid in a URL? http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1738.txt
>>
>>    Characters can be unsafe for a number of reasons.  The space
>>    character is unsafe because significant spaces may disappear and
>>    insignificant spaces may be introduced when URLs are transcribed or
>>    typeset or subjected to the treatment of word-processing programs.
>>    The characters "<" and ">" are unsafe because they are used as the
>>    delimiters around URLs in free text; the quote mark (""") is used to
>>    delimit URLs in some systems.  The character "#" is unsafe and should
>>    always be encoded because it is used in World Wide Web and in other
>>    systems to delimit a URL from a fragment/anchor identifier that might
>>    follow it.  The character "%" is unsafe because it is used for
>>    encodings of other characters.  Other characters are unsafe because
>>    gateways and other transport agents are known to sometimes modify
>>    such characters. These characters are "{", "}", "|", "\", "^", "~",
>>    "[", "]", and "`".
>>    All unsafe characters must always be encoded within a URL.
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 10:52 AM, Adam Marshall
>> <adam.marshall at it.ox.ac.uk <mailto:adam.marshall at it.ox.ac.uk>> wrote:
>>
>> You can't have a target URL that contains a space in the new Web
>> Content tool.
>>
>> Is that deliberate? It's breaking loads of our pages. A blocker.
>>
>> adam
>>
>> --
>>
>> ** Note change of email address to adam.marshall at it.ox.ac.uk
>> <mailto:adam.marshall at it.ox.ac.uk> **
>>
>> Dr A C Marshall, WebLearn Service Manager, University of Oxford.
>> IT Services, 13 Banbury Rd, Oxford. OX2 6NN.
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> sakai-dev mailing list
>> sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org
>> <mailto:sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org>
>> http://collab.sakaiproject.org/mailman/listinfo/sakai-dev
>>
>> TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send email to
>> sakai-dev-unsubscribe at collab.sakaiproject.org
>> <mailto:sakai-dev-unsubscribe at collab.sakaiproject.org> with a subject
>> of "unsubscribe"
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> sakai-dev mailing list
>> sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org
>> http://collab.sakaiproject.org/mailman/listinfo/sakai-dev
>>
>> TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send email to
>> sakai-dev-unsubscribe at collab.sakaiproject.org with a subject of
>> "unsubscribe"
>> Sam Ottenhoff <mailto:ottenhoff at longsight.com>
>> July 30, 2014 at 11:00 AM
>> Isn't a space invalid in a URL? http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1738.txt
>>
>>
>> Characters can be unsafe for a number of reasons. The space
>> character is unsafe because significant spaces may disappear and
>> insignificant spaces may be introduced when URLs are transcribed or
>> typeset or subjected to the treatment of word-processing programs.
>> The characters "<" and ">" are unsafe because they are used as the
>> delimiters around URLs in free text; the quote mark (""") is used to
>> delimit URLs in some systems. The character "#" is unsafe and should
>> always be encoded because it is used in World Wide Web and in other
>> systems to delimit a URL from a fragment/anchor identifier that might
>> follow it. The character "%" is unsafe because it is used for
>> encodings of other characters. Other characters are unsafe because
>> gateways and other transport agents are known to sometimes modify
>> such characters. These characters are "{", "}", "|", "\", "^", "~",
>> "[", "]", and "`".
>>
>> All unsafe characters must always be encoded within a URL.
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> sakai-dev mailing list
>> sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org
>> http://collab.sakaiproject.org/mailman/listinfo/sakai-dev
>>
>> TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send email to
>> sakai-dev-unsubscribe at collab.sakaiproject.org with a subject of
>> "unsubscribe"
>> Adam Marshall <mailto:adam.marshall at it.ox.ac.uk>
>> July 30, 2014 at 10:52 AM
>> You can't have a target URL that contains a space in the new Web
>> Content tool.
>>
>> Is that deliberate? It's breaking loads of our pages. A blocker.
>>
>> adam
>>
>> --
>>
>> ** Note change of email address to adam.marshall at it.ox.ac.uk **
>>
>> Dr A C Marshall, WebLearn Service Manager, University of Oxford.
>> IT Services, 13 Banbury Rd, Oxford. OX2 6NN.
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> sakai-dev mailing list
>> sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org
>> http://collab.sakaiproject.org/mailman/listinfo/sakai-dev
>>
>> TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send email to
>> sakai-dev-unsubscribe at collab.sakaiproject.org with a subject of
>> "unsubscribe"
>
> --
> Neal Caidin
> Sakai Community Coordinator
> Apereo Foundation
> neal.caidin at apereo.org
> Skype me! (but let me know in advance for the first interaction) - nealkdin
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> sakai-dev mailing list
> sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org
> http://collab.sakaiproject.org/mailman/listinfo/sakai-dev
>
> TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send email to sakai-dev-unsubscribe at collab.sakaiproject.org with a subject of "unsubscribe"
>