[Freeipa-devel] [PATCH] 0015 Only split CSV strings once

[Rob Crittenden]

Petr Viktorin wrote:
> On 02/24/2012 12:09 PM, Martin Kosek wrote:
>> On Fri, 2012-02-24 at 11:09 +0100, Petr Viktorin wrote:
>> ...
>>> You need four backslashes for a literal backslash, three to escape a
>>> comma. I think 2.1 clients are already broken, and the backwards
>>> incompatibility would only affect workarounds.
>>>
>  >
>> Yes, but CSV values without escaping works. And this IMO covers 99% of
>> user cases, especially given the fact that escaping is that difficult to
>> use. Users can simply not use characters that need escaping.
>
> CSV values without backslashes and initial double quotes would not be
> affected at all.
>
>> We cannot break commands like this one:
>> ipa dnsrecord-add example.com foo --a-rec=10.0.0.1,10.0.0.2
>> ipa user-mod --phone=555-1234,555-6789
>
> I also don't want to break commands like this:
>
> ipa [...] --a-rec=10.0.0.1,10.0.0.2 --a-rec=10.0.0.3
>
>> I would be OK with changing CSV formatting if it supports both ways:
>> 1) Plain arrays from new clients where CSV parsing is done just once
>> (only on clients)
>
> Old clients *already send* plain arrays; but the server currently
> errorneously parses each part again. Maybe a better fix for now would be
> to set the "don't parse again" flag on the XMLRPC receiving code,
> instead of the client. That way old and new clients would behave
> identically.
>
>> 2) CSV value which is then parsed on the server
>
> Is there any reason at all to do CSV parsing on the server, for the
> CLI/XMLRPC case? I can't see it.

Because we want people to be able to write their own client and need to 
be able to handle whatever they send.

rob