190598 - Fragile assumptions about XML serialization in utility to import bugs from XML

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 190596

(Bugzilla :: Bug Import/Export & Moving, defect)

Description

[Bob Kline]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20021120 Netscape/7.01
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20021120 Netscape/7.01

The code to import bugs from an XML document uses a bizarre approach to finding
the elements it's looking for, assuming it knows where the elements are by
position.  If the whitespace nodes contained in the serialization of the XML
document do not exactly match what the code naively expects, the bugs are not
imported correctly, or are not imported at all.  It's even possible to submit an
XML document which results in an amusing email report that "0.5 bug(s)
successfully moved from ...."

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create an XML bugzilla document with no extra whitespace nodes between elements.
2. Run importxml.pl.
3. Check your email.

Actual Results:  
No bugs were imported.

Expected Results:  
Imported the bugs.

This should really be a separate bug, assuming I'm right, but there should be
documentation of the requirements for the XML document used by importxml.pl to
import bugs.  I'll defer filing it to give folks a chance to tell me I just
wasn't looking in the right place for the documentation.  Saying I should have
used the source is not an appropriate substitute in this case, given the cryptic
approach used by the code in this utility for dealing with the data in the XML
document.

Comment 1

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 190596 ***

Comment 2

[Jacob Steenhagen]

V. Exact Duplicate