Re: XML with invalid chars

On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 11:22:37PM -0400, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> On 04/27/2011 05:30 PM, Noah Misch wrote:
>> To make things worse, the dump/reload problems seems to depend on your version
>> of libxml2, or something. With git master, a CentOS 5 system with
>> 2.6.26-2.1.2.8.el5_5.1 accepts the ^A byte, but an Ubuntu 8.04 LTS system with
>> 2.6.31.dfsg-2ubuntu rejects it. Even with a patch like this, systems with a
>> lenient libxml2 will be liable to store XML data that won't restore on a system
>> with a strict libxml2. Perhaps we should emit a build-time warning if the local
>> libxml2 is lenient?
>
> No, I think we need to be strict ourselves.

Then I suppose we'd also scan for invalid characters in xml_parse()? Or, at
least, do so when linked to a libxml2 that neglects to do so itself?

>> Injecting the check here aids "xmlelement" and "xmlforest" , but "xmlcomment"
>> and "xmlpi" still let the invalid byte through. You can also still inject the
>> byte into an attribute value via "xmlelement". I wonder if it wouldn't make
>> more sense to just pass any XML that we generate from scratch through libxml2.
>> There are a lot of holes to plug, otherwise.
>
> Maybe there are, but I'd want lots of convincing that we should do that
> at this stage. Maybe for 9.2. I think we can plug the holes fairly
> simply for xmlpi and xmlcomment, and catch the attributes by moving this
> check up into map_sql_value_to_xml_value().

I don't have much convincing to offer -- hunting down the holes seem fine, too.

Thanks,
nm