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

Suporte
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 curtidas
2

Is there anything we can do here @eviltrout?

2 curtidas
3

Hmmm, the problem here seems to be that Ruby can’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.

6 curtidas
4

It honestly seems a bit odd to me that I can’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.

2 curtidas
5

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

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

3 curtidas
6

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

It’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 curtidas
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 here


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

4 curtidas
8

It’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, apparently
 :wink:

4 curtidas
9

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

We’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 Postel’s law.

In other news, I can’t wait for someone to implement a Discourse<->Matrix bridge, rather than clunky hyperlinking between the two!

5 curtidas
10

The problem is that the parser in question is the Ruby Standard Library one.[quote=“ara4n, post:9, topic:52640”]
In other news, I can’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 curtida
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 ‘do the right thing’ (but isn’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 you’re meant to escape @ symbols in URL paths too. Can someone confirm if Ruby’s URL parser chokes on the unescaped @?

1 curtida
12

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

13

fab. in which case i think we’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 Riot’s native URLs.

5 curtidas
14

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

15

for sure. just seems a bit weird that the Ruby parser is being more unforgiving than any other one we’ve encountered. I’m pretty sure we’re not the only people out there who cheat on escaping some inoffensive URL characters in order to make their URLs look prettier
 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, we’re fixing it, as you say :slight_smile:

5 curtidas