[Web-SIG] String Types in WSGI [Graham's WSGI for py3]

[Graham Dumpleton]

2009/9/18 René Dudfield <renesd at gmail.com>:
> On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 8:56 AM, Graham Dumpleton
> <graham.dumpleton at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> The big problems are always PATH_INFO and SCRIPT_NAME.  Those are the
>>> only values that are in the dict URL-decoded and might contain non-ASCII
>>> characters. (except for headers, but that's a different story because
>>> the only real-world problem there are cookie headers and those are
>>> troubleing for more reasons than just character sets)
>>>
>>> My latest change to the WSGI sandbox hg repo [2] was that I added a
>>> notice that later PEP revisions might document a RAW_SCRIPT_NAME or
>>> something that contains the URL quoted values.  It however turns out
>>> that this value is not available from within a webserver context (We're
>>> talking about Apache and IIS here) so that the problem of unquoted
>>> values will not go away.
>>
>> I am still waiting for the good explanation of why access to the raw
>> URL quoted values is so important. Can you please explain what the
>> requirement is?
>>
>> The only example I recall was related to web servers eliminating
>> repeating slashes thereby effectively not making it possible to have
>> URLs in query strings with out a custom encoding string. Since there
>> are alternatives, I don't find that alone a compelling argument.
>>
>
> Why is the raw url needed(very rarely)?
>
> Sometimes there are bugs.  Access to the raw string lets you work
> around those bugs... if you need to.  Dropping to a lower level is
> needed sometimes.
>
> Some APIs require you to send back an exact copy of the input url.
> Or sometimes you want to know what input url was used... not the cleaned
> up version of it.

What APIs? Can we have some concrete examples in common use rather
than theoretical possibilities?

> Sometimes clients calling the wsgi code will be
> buggy... and looking at the unquoted url is needed in those cases to
> work around buggy clients.

Bugs in WSGI adapters aren't a good reason for why it is needed. If
the WSGI adapters are broken, fix the WSGI adapters.

Graham