791069 - Firefox considers correct e-mail address as incorrect

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Core :: DOM: Core & HTML, defect)

Description

[Sylvhem]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux i686; rv:15.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/15.0.1
Build ID: 20120907231835

Steps to reproduce:

I input an exotic but correct e-mail address in a HTML5 field for this address (<input type="email" />). Example of address : "John[Doe]"@example.com


Actual results:

Firefox highlights the field in red.


Expected results:

Firefox should considers this address as a correct (cf RFC 5322 chapter 3.4).

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

The specification is here : http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#valid-e-mail-address

I'm not not good at reading specs and regexp but it looks like that quotes aren't allowed.

Comment 2

[Gordon P. Hemsley [:GPHemsley]]

(In reply to Matthias Versen (Matti) from comment #1)
> The specification is here :
> http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#valid-e-mail-address

Multipage link:
http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/states-of-the-type-attribute.html#valid-e-mail-address

> I'm not not good at reading specs and regexp but it looks like that quotes
> aren't allowed.

Indeed. HTML willfully violates RFC 5322:

"This requirement is a willful violation of RFC 5322, which defines a syntax for e-mail addresses that is simultaneously too strict (before the "@" character), too vague (after the "@" character), and too lax (allowing comments, whitespace characters, and quoted strings in manners unfamiliar to most users) to be of practical use here."

Probably a WONTFIX.

Comment 3

[Kyle Huey (Exited; not receiving bugmail, old account, do not use)]

Yep.  Please raise this issue with HTML if you want to take it further.

Comment 4

[Matthew Wronka]

Attachment: Minimalist changes to support quoted parts

I've created two sets of diffs, as the WHATWG willful-violation prohibiting valid addresses seems like it makes the input type useless for general use (i.e. if you want to accept standard eMail addresses you're stuck with a text input).

A few people seem to feel like this is a bug in the WHATWG spec, e.g. bug 781574 and bug 656009.

The second patch I'll attach extends the validation to also verify length limits according to the eMail standards (RFC 5321), and support internationalized local-parts according to RFC 5336.  It also only puny-codes the domain which helps alleviate some length pressure.

Comment 5

[Matthew Wronka]

Attachment: More complete changes for eMail validation

Alternative patch which is more invasive but is closer to correctly validating eMail addresses.

Comment 6

[Matthew Wronka]

(In reply to Matthew Wronka from comment #4)
> A few people seem to feel like this is a bug in the WHATWG spec, e.g. bug
> 781574 and bug 656009.

Sorry, 656009 is unrelated to this.

Comment 7

[Matthew Wronka]

Attachment: Updated to work with recent changes

Comment 8

[Matthew Wronka]

Attachment: Updated to work with changes as of 20140203

Comment 9

[Gordon P. Hemsley [:GPHemsley]]

Matthew, while your work is appreciated, it is unlikely to get incorporated into the codebase as long as the HTML spec continues to willfully violate RFC 5322. This bug is closed, and it would be fruitless to continue to attach patches to it.

If you feel strongly about the restriction on the content of <input type="email" />, you should take it up with the WHATWG:

* http://www.whatwg.org/mailing-list#specs
* https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/enter_bug.cgi?product=WHATWG&component=HTML