345716 - addMicrosummaryGenerator with data: URL not working

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox Graveyard :: Microsummaries, defect)

Description

[Johannes la Poutre]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1b1) Gecko/20060710 Firefox/2.0b1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1b1) Gecko/20060710 Firefox/2.0b1

Adding a microsummary with window.sidebar.addMicrosummaryGenerator(URI) fails if the URI is a data:xxxxxxx pseudo URL.

See test case for details.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Load the attached test case
2. click "add a microsummary generator..."
3. the "Add Microsummary.." Dialog appears, click OK (or Return)
4. look at output in Javascript console
5. The same error message is shown 3 times (see actual results)
6. The rest of the script is aborted (alert 'done' does not show - see source)

Actual Results:  
JS Console shows the following line three times:

uncaught exception: [Exception... "'<error>' when calling method: [nsIMicrosummaryService::addGenerator]" nsresult: "0x805303f4 (<unknown>)" location: "JS frame :: file:///Users/joe/Desktop/Firefox-2.0b1.app/Contents/MacOS/components/nsSidebar.js :: anonymous :: line 301" data: no]

Expected Results:  
Contents of data:xxxxxx URI should be decoded and processed; ultimately a file should show up in ..../Moz-Profile/microsummary-generators/generator-title.xml


window.sidebar.addMicrosummaryGenerator() works fine for http:// and file:// URI's

Comment 1

[Johannes la Poutre]

Attachment: Testcase: adding microsummaries from data:URI

Comment 2

[Johannes la Poutre]

A few more debugging observations.

In nsSidebar.js, just before line 301, there's a call to newURI. This results in an object with the following properties for a data: URI:

-*- sidebar component: spec: data:application/x.microsummary+xml;charset=UTF-8,[...]enerator%3E%0A
-*- sidebar component: prePath: data:
-*- sidebar component: scheme: data


For a HTTP uri the URI object looks much more complete:

-*- sidebar component: spec: http://www.xs4all.nl/~jlpoutre/BoT/Firefox/Microsummaries/generators/slashdot.org.xml
-*- sidebar component: prePath: http://www.xs4all.nl
-*- sidebar component: scheme: http
-*- sidebar component: userPass: 
-*- sidebar component: username: 
-*- sidebar component: password: 
-*- sidebar component: hostPort: www.xs4all.nl
-*- sidebar component: host: www.xs4all.nl
-*- sidebar component: port: -1
-*- sidebar component: path: /~jlpoutre/BoT/Firefox/Microsummaries/generators/slashdot.org.xml
-*- sidebar component: equals: function equals() {
    [native code]
}
-*- sidebar component: schemeIs: function schemeIs() {
    [native code]
}
-*- sidebar component: clone: function clone() {
    [native code]
}
-*- sidebar component: resolve: function resolve() {
    [native code]
}
-*- sidebar component: asciiSpec: http://www.xs4all.nl/~jlpoutre/BoT/Firefox/Microsummaries/generators/slashdot.org.xml
-*- sidebar component: asciiHost: www.xs4all.nl
-*- sidebar component: originCharset: UTF-8
-*- sidebar component: QueryInterface: function QueryInterface() {
    [native code]
}

Comment 3

[Jackie Liu]

I can reproduce in "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061003 BonEcho/2.0".  It's a little late in the game, but blocking-firefox2?

Comment 4

[Adam Guthrie]

Firefox 2 is finished. Viva Grandpa Radiso! (Plus, we'd ever block on anything this minor anyway.)

Comment 5

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

data: URIs are potentially unsafe to use as microsummaries, as are javascript: URIs, and are likely filtered out somewhere along the line.

we are way past nominations for anything but absolute showstoppers (regression topcrashes, major UI bustage, and broken web compat, etc)

Comment 6

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

Note that while you can't install a generator using a data: URL, you *can* install a generator programmatically from an extension or other code with chrome privileges.

To do so, just call nsIMicrosummaryService::installGenerator(), passing it an XML document containing the generator.  The service will install the generator, saving it as a file in the user's profile and caching it in its local generators cache.

See the interface definition here:

http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/browser/components/microsummaries/public/nsIMicrosummaryService.idl#191

When programmatically installing generators, you should specify a unique identifier for the generator by adding a "uri" attribute to the "generator" element.  The attribute must contain a valid URI, but you can specify an arbitrary identifier using a URN, i.e. urn:<any sequence of characters which are valid in a URI>.

To guarantee uniqueness, I recommend using URNs containing UUIDs generated by nsIUUIDGenerator::generateUUID(), although you are free to use another scheme appropriate to your extension.

Note that generators installed by nsISidebar::addMicrosummaryGenerator() use unique identifiers of the form urn:source:<source URI>, where <source URI> is the URI from which the generator was downloaded.  Unless you are installing generators which are also available remotely from the address embedded in the URI, you should not use this form.

Comment 7

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

(In reply to comment #6)
> Note that while you can't install a generator using a data: URL, you *can*
> install a generator programmatically from an extension or other code with
> chrome privileges.

I put up a document on devmo with more documentation, including code snippets, for how to do this:

http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Microsummary_topics#Programmatically_installing_a_microsummary_generator

Comment 8

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

- BUGSPAM -
Wontfixing all Microsummaries bugs, since the feature has been removed from the core product and previous versions won't get further fixes for it.
If interested in supporting Microsummaries in your add-on, you're free to use our old microsummaries code and to search all previously open bugs by looking for [microsummaries-feature-removal] in the status whiteboard field.