Textpattern CMS

#1 2013-02-01 01:43:34

gomedia

Plugin Author

Registered: 2008-06-01

Posts: 1,373

Article title inconsistencies

There seem to be some inconsistencies regarding “blank/empty” article titles. Consider the following scenarios:

	Article title	URL-only title	Article list tab	Recent articles list
1.	empty	empty	Untitled	Untitled x
2.	space	%20	blank	not listed
3.	0	0	Untitled	Untitled x

1. title is empty (literally) – url-title empty, article listed as Untitled – fair enough
2. title contains spaces only – url-title set with “%20”, article title blank in list tab, not listed under recent articles – hmm …
3. title set to a zero – url-title set to a zero, article listed as Untitled – yikes!

All this is a consequence of using the PHP empty() function but I wonder if it would be better to:

• trim() the article title before checking it’s contents, and before storing it in the database
• use something like $Title == '' rather than empty($Title) to determine whether the article is untitled

Or maybe it’s all too arcane & inconsequential to bother with? Open to the floor …

#2 2013-02-01 02:19:19

Gocom

Developer Emeritus

From: Helsinki, Finland

Registered: 2006-07-14

Posts: 4,533

Website

Re: Article title inconsistencies

Same issues and inconsistencies hold true elsewhere. The dev branch have lifted some of them, but the source has bad programming practices. One of these is the use of PHP’s equal operator (instead of identical) and all around believing that SQL leads to the same results.

This creates all sort of issues and some cases even potential security vulnerabilities. Equal operator is sort of bitch.

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Rah | GitHub

#3 2013-02-01 02:45:56

gomedia

Plugin Author

Registered: 2008-06-01

Posts: 1,373

Re: Article title inconsistencies

Gocom wrote:

Same issues and inconsistencies hold true elsewhere. The dev branch have lifted some of them, but the source has bad programming practices. One of these is the use of PHP’s equal operator (instead of identical) and all around believing that SQL leads to the same results.

This creates all sort of issues and some cases even potential security vulnerabilities. Equal operator is sort of bitch.

Ho hum … sometimes it doesn’t bear thinking about.

But whilst we’re on the subject of “consequences” here’s another query