160221 - data: URLs in HREF not working

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(Core :: Networking, defect)

Description

[benc]

Short description:

While writing a data: URL smoketest, I found that I could take the "larry" image
from the RFC and get it to work in an html file, and via URL bar, but not via an
HREF.

Basically, I cleaned it up in notepad, so it had no whitespace, and pasted it
into whatever I was using.

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODdhMAAwAPAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAMAAwAAAC8IyPqcvt3wCcDkiLc7C0qwyGHhSWpjQu5yqmCYsapyuvUUlvONmOZtfzgFzByTB10QgxOR0TqBQejhRNzOfkVJ+5YiUqrXF5Y5lKh/DeuNcP5yLWGsEbtLiOSpa/TPg7JpJHxyendzWTBfX0cxOnKPjgBzi4diinWGdkF8kjdfnycQZXZeYGejmJlZeGl9i2icVqaNVailT6F5iJ90m6mvuTS4OK05M0vDk0Q4XUtwvKOzrcd3iq9uisF81M1OIcR7lEewwcLp7tuNNkM3uNna3F2JQFo97Vriy/Xl4/f1cf5VWzXyym7PH
hhx4dbgYKAAA7

My guess is that it might be an escaping issue, but more educated people have
other ideas. Since my experience w/ data: URLs is about 20 minutes old, I'm open
to anyone else's ideas.

Comment 1

[benc]

Hmm, works when I saved the link in bugzilla. possible composer bug then...

Comment 2

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

ok, I investigated a bit:
The URL in this bug's URL field still contains a space (near the end) (where
bugzilla wrapped comment 0).

If inserted into a Composer link, it escapes the space to %20. (this is not a bug)
Now, base64 URLs are not escaped by the Mozilla code (this may be a bug, not sure).
This means that NSPR's Base64 decoder might fail because of the %20. Which
causes the load to fail. Which explains why clicking the link does nothing.

If I take out the space and create the link in composer, it works fine.

Comment 3

[Bradley Baetz (:bbaetz)]

base64 urls shouldn't contain spaces, though.

Comment 4

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

(seeing this on linux too)

so bbaetz... should we unescape the query string, or is this bug INVALID?

Comment 5

[benc]

I went home and tried it in composer, and it worked fine. I must have made some
strange typo when I was at work (even though I tried it a couple different times
before going onto IRC...)

Until I come up w/ better steps (or explain what happened before)... INVALID

Comment 6

[benc]

Now that I understand things better, I see what you mean. if I said "base64",
and put a UTF-8 escaped space, well, I probably deserve that.

Can someone VERIFY this bug? TIA.

Comment 7

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

verified.