bug - use of & (ampersand) in the html filename of a section

[completerookie]

inadvertantly used an ampersand in the file name of a section and then whe I uploaded, it generated an error

Error: Bad input string "SECTIONID=oils-&-lubricants.html&NOLOGIN=1". Argument count

the thing here is that Actinic generated the file name for me, and it also validated that there were no issues with the html files - clearly there is.

Actinic removes the comma from a filename but not the ampresand

[wjcampbe]

Kevin
The ampersand is a valid part of the url - it is a marker for beginning of an additional parameter you are supplying. Your example reads as

(parameter)SECTIONID=(value)oils
(nonsense)-lubricants.html
(parameter)NOLOGIN=(value)1

that is basic html.

Actinic did not create the oils-&-lubricants.html name for you. Actinic uses _ not - to fill spaces and would have created oils_&_lubricants (in fact v8,5 would have produced oils___lubricants.html and would not even have used the &).

Sorry, but this is not an Actinic problem.

[completerookie]

I still believe its an actinic problem.
an inexperienced user added a section called "oils & lubricants" and it created "oils__lubricants.html"

it didn't look right, so she looked at other names, saw that page names seemed to have the underscore instead of spaces and so changed it to "oils_&_lubricants.html" and actinic let her.

I FULLY understand that the ampersand and question marks are standard html parameter passing conventions, no-one is denying that.

Actinic is ALSO designed for inexperienced "html savvy" users, they clearly protect you from putting other characters in the html page names so why not other characters

lets just restrict it to alpha, numerics,underscores and hypens.
it lets you put spaces in the name ut then asks the user "do you want to upload a filename with spaces in it??" - again a message that the in-experienced user wouldn't know the answer to.

[completerookie]

another quick experiment just done , this may be an upgrade problem !,

8.0.4 allows you to put these characters in, but upon "APPLY", removes them and replaces it with underscores.

so although it seems to now prevent you from adding them, it doesn't prevent you from uploading them as part of the validation process.

[wjcampbe]

????????????

You cannot possibly upload what you cannot add, so Actinic does a better job of this than Toyota do of stopping you from putting diesel in your petrol tank.

I think the majority of users would opt for faster uploading times over additional preload validation routines. Though if the validation is part of the offline site construction process rather than the code build, then I could change my mind.

I find the expectation that you should be able to do things totally incorrectly and the software should sort it all out for you to be getting more common in all types of software. [and more than a little sad]

[completerookie]

I find the expectation that you should be able to do things totally incorrectly and the software should sort it all out for you to be getting more common in all types of software. [and more than a little sad]

life doesn't work like that Bill.

I post a question on the forum, you respond, i respond, thats life.
I do NOT expect everything to work 100%, never have, never will but if by making a small change, you can prevent problems later on then . . .

I clearly have the ampersand in my web page name, don't ask how it got there, I don't know. but then from the questions on the forum, a lot of people don't know how things happen - they just do.

I happend to click on that page link as part of the testing, on site preview (on the PC) it loads a page called "PreviewHTML/P_shop.html"
there's no parameters, and the page works, when I get it out on the web, the page fails with an embedded ampersand. !
problem is, I assume that if it works on the PC, there's no real reason for it not to work on the web.

I write software as part of my job, and I encourage "user testing" as a MAJOR part of any software - if people find issues with my software, then let me know and I will CONSIDER changing the some/all of my code to prevent future issues.

[Duncan Rounding]

[COLOR="red"]...an inexperienced user added a section called "oils & lubricants" and it created "oils__lubricants.html"

it didn't look right, so she looked at other names, saw that page names seemed to have the underscore instead of spaces and so changed it to "oils_&_lubricants.html"...

As you know Actinic automatically creates a page name based on the section name and in this case it removed the ampersand and replaced it with an underscore - just what you would want. It also allows you to override the page name to be anything you wish it to be - be it valid or otherwise - again just as you'd want. To expect Actinic to check validity of all typed in html is asking a lot and would reduce the flexibilty of the program dramatically.

Inexperienced users, as you righlty say, can make changes that they are unaware of the consequences; this is a typical example of that, but part of the success of Actinic (and why many people are using it) is being able to have this flexibility.

Somewhat of a catch 22 I think.

[NormanRouxel]

We often rely on being able to override the default behaviour where super strict error checking would annoyingly prevent us.

A good example - you can put the malformed URL

http://news.bbc.co.uk" target="blank

into the LINK URL field and Actinic lets you. And this is exactly what you want when you'd like the linked page to open in a new window.

[skinnybloke]

Hi - just had a similar incident with a client of mine. He has used ampersands in some of his product reference numbers, which Actinic allows him to do.

He has set some of these up as related products. When you click on these related products you get the error message

Error: Bad input string "PRODREF=DD-B&B7&NOLOGIN=1". Argument count 4.

Go to http://www.enjoy.co.uk/acatalog/Glow...ht_Holder.html and click on the related product "Loop Candelabra".

Should the Actinic software allow him to enter ampersands in the the product reference number. If so, should it replace them with something else when performing this type of operation?

[Kiran]

Hi David

As far as I know you can use & in the product refrence only certain characters like : | etc are not allowed. But I've tired a similar setting on a defalut site and I get the same problem too, this however only seems to happen when you use the related products link and not when go directly to the product. So I will need to get this checked.

Kind Regards

[Kiran]

Hi David

I'm afraid it is the "&" that is causing the problem here too. "&" is a comparison symbol, therefore putting this in breaks javascript or perlscript calls(which is what the related poducts link uses).

Hope this helps

Kind Regards

[completerookie]

I come back to my original point, if this is a known issue, then why not have actinic check and issue an approriate error message

[skinnybloke]

I totally agree with Kevin above. Would Actinic like to comment on this - is there a design change on the way?

[cdicken]

Would Actinic like to comment on this - is there a design change on the way?

I'll raise a bug for this. You can keep the ampersands in the product references. All you need to do in the layout for the best sellers/new products links is replace any instances of

<actinic:variable Name="ProductID" />

with

<actinic:variable name="ProductID" encoding="url" />

This replaces the '&' with '%26', which works fine in the links.

(note - pre 8.5.1 the variable will be 'ProductReference' rather than 'Product ID'.

You can also right-click on the variable in the layout code, select 'Edit Appearance' and set the 'Encoding' to 'URL' to do this.

[skinnybloke]

Thanks for the reply Chris