Broken links (blank page) with invalid URLs with double #

Support
1

Earlier today, I posted a topic and I noticed that there was an issue with some of the links:

The first two links inside that topic were broken:

https://riot.im/app/#/room/#safenetwork:matrix.org
https://riot.im/app/#/room/#safenetwork-dev:matrix.org

If you right click on the link and open it in a new tab, it works fine. But if you do a normal click on the link, it brings you to a blank page with the following URL: https://safenetforum.org/clicks/track?url=https%3A%2F%2Friot.im%2Fapp%2F%23%2Froom%2F%23safenetwork%3Amatrix.org&post_id=105936&topic_id=11711

I found a temporary fix: if I link to https://riot.im/app/#/room/%23safenetwork:matrix.org (%23 instead of #) it works fine! but I would still like to be able to use the normal link if possible :slight_smile: thank you!

4 Likes
2

Is there anything we can do here @eviltrout?

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3

Hmmm, the problem here seems to be that Ruby canā€™t parse those URLs:

URI.parse("https://riot.im/app/#/room/#safenetwork:matrix.org")
URI::InvalidURIError: bad URI(is not URI?): https://riot.im/app/#/room/#safenetwork:matrix.org

It honestly seems a bit odd to me to have two hashes in a URL like that.

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4

It honestly seems a bit odd to me that I canā€™t forward our forum population to our Matrix chatroom. :wink: Seriously: If Firefox can open those links, Discourse/Ruby should be able to do it as well.

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5

Is this a valid URL per the RFC? If not, itā€™s odd that a new protocol is based on invalid URLs.

Also, it should work if you encode according to the spec: Element

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6

According to this stack overflow answer a fragment is not allowed to contain #, and so Rubyā€™s internal URI processor is correct.

Itā€™s cool that Firefox allows it, but it would be quite a lot of work to audit our codebase and find all the places where we parse URIs and allow for this special case.

5 Likes
7

It is an invalid URI you have there, riot should be the one fixing this strange scheme :slight_smile:

Is there a bug report somewhere in the relevant riot issue tracker you raised?

EDIT: triple ninjad hereā€¦

Issue tracker for riot is :arrow_right: https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web

4 Likes
8

Itā€™s not Riot itself, but actually a Matrix convention:

https://matrix.to/#/#wearefairphone:matrix.org

Will try to raise the issue with them.

Edit: You can follow the discussion here:

https://matrix.to/#/!cURbafjkfsMDVwdRDQ:matrix.org/$14909817704630VDcMZ:disroot.org

(Copy the link to your browser address bar. :stuck_out_tongue: ) Direct link to a message does work in Discourse, apparentlyā€¦ :wink:

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9

Hey, project lead for Matrix here. Yup, weā€™re aware that itā€™s a bit naughty to put unescaped #'s in URL fragments, but in practice this is the first time in two years weā€™ve seen anyone actually hitting it as a bug! The workaround is of course to escape it properly as %23.

Weā€™ll have a think about the right way to fix this - perhaps we should switch to using Unicode Character 'VIEWDATA SQUARE' (U+2317) instead O:-)

In the interim it might be kind to consider tweaking your parser to be slightly more forgiving on what it accepts however, in accordance with Postelā€™s law.

In other news, I canā€™t wait for someone to implement a Discourse<->Matrix bridge, rather than clunky hyperlinking between the two!

5 Likes
10

The problem is that the parser in question is the Ruby Standard Library one.[quote=ā€œara4n, post:9, topic:52640ā€]
In other news, I canā€™t wait for someone to implement a Discourse<->Matrix bridge, rather than clunky hyperlinking between the two!
[/quote]

This will be way easier when this plugin is live:

1 Like
11

another workaround might be to use the intended minimal URL form for matrix.to URLs - You're invited to talk on Matrix is meant to work and ā€˜do the right thingā€™ (but isnā€™t implemented yet: github.com/matrix-org/matrix.to/issues/10).

However, it also commits a slight naughtiness by hoping to produce user links that look like https://matrix.to/@matthew:matrix.org. Technically youā€™re meant to escape @ symbols in URL paths too. Can someone confirm if Rubyā€™s URL parser chokes on the unescaped @?

1 Like
12

The link works here without throwing an error, so it seems to support it.

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fab. in which case i think weā€™ll have a viable workaround once someone fixes https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix.to/issues/10 - and meanwhile https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/issues/3550 has been filed to fix Riotā€™s native URLs.

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14

Honestly the best thing is for you guys to fix your stuff, which youā€™re here and doing, so :+1: cheers for that.

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for sure. just seems a bit weird that the Ruby parser is being more unforgiving than any other one weā€™ve encountered. Iā€™m pretty sure weā€™re not the only people out there who cheat on escaping some inoffensive URL characters in order to make their URLs look prettierā€¦ I wonder whether the story here is actually that the Ruby parser just needs a greedy matcher when looking for #'s or something.

edit: eitherway, weā€™re fixing it, as you say :slight_smile:

5 Likes