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5 Replies Last post: Jun 14, 2008 11:56 AM by LG  
Chris Bronze
Chris
3 posts since
Jun 9, 2008
Currently Being Moderated

Jun 13, 2008 10:41 AM

Invalid character references in XML stream

Hi,

 

I'm a developer for Digsby, and while debugging a user's problem connecting to a recently upgraded Openfire server (3.4.3 to 3.5.1) I found the following in a vCard response.

 

data before being fed into the parser:

'> '

 

The problem is that "& #0;" is not valid XML 1.0 (invalid character reference; not in the valid ranges for the construction of Char for XML)

 

This in turn breaks my parser (libxml2), which causes a disconnect.

 

I am aware the latest version is now 3.5.2, but looking through the commit history, I didn't see anything that looked like it would solve the problem.

 

points of interest: revisions 8618 and 10506 (JM-1388) of XMLLightweightParser

 

Message was edited by: christopher

please note: added spaces between "&" and "#" so that it this would be visible.  original data does not have a space.

Tags: bug_report, openfire, xmpp
Gaston Dombiak Jiver
Gaston Dombiak
3,804 posts since
Sep 26, 2001
Currently Being Moderated
Jun 13, 2008 1:08 PM in response to: Chris
Re: Invalid character references in XML stream

Hey Christopher,

 

The Jira issue you are referring to is about invalid surrogate characters. Is that your case too? If it is then Openfire 3.5.2 will not let a user store in the database invalid surrogate characters. If that is not your case then make sure that your database is storing things in UTF-8 format.

 

Regards,

 

  -- Gato

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Chris Bronze
Chris
3 posts since
Jun 9, 2008
Currently Being Moderated
Jun 13, 2008 3:25 PM in response to: Gaston Dombiak
Re: Invalid character references in XML stream

No, the problem is not with invalid surrogate characters.  Unfortunately, the server and database in question are not mine.

 

I referenced the issue about surrogate characters, and invalid characters in the stream because I believe code for dealing with this will need to be added nearby.

 

The issue here is that Openfire has sent an invalid character reference, for which I could not find handling in your source tree.   According to the XML 1.0 spec, this constitutes a violation of the well-formedness constraint.  This is a fatal parser error.

 

 

 

 

When & #0; comes accross the wire, Openfire has stopped sending valid XML.  It does not matter what is in the database, it is simply wrong for the server to send & #0;

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Gaston Dombiak Jiver
Gaston Dombiak
3,804 posts since
Sep 26, 2001
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Jun 13, 2008 3:25 PM in response to: Chris
Re: Invalid character references in XML stream

Hey Christopher,

 

Are you sure that that content came from a client? I saw that error happen when not using UTF-8 in the database. So the content that came from the client was fine but it got corrupted when storing it in the database. But maybe this is not your case.

 

Thanks,

 

  -- Gato

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Chris Bronze
Chris
3 posts since
Jun 9, 2008
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Jun 13, 2008 3:31 PM in response to: Gaston Dombiak
Re: Invalid character references in XML stream

 

I do not know the origin of the invalid XML.

 

 

I am certain that it was sent from the server.

 

 

Corrupted database or not, this should not have been emitted when building the outgiong XML.

 

 

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LG KeyContributor
LG
5,068 posts since
Dec 13, 2005
Currently Being Moderated
Jun 14, 2008 11:56 AM in response to: Chris
Re: Invalid character references in XML stream

Hi,

 

I did create JM-884 a long time ago. Anyhow this would not help if the database corrupts the message.

 

One would need a validation for all incoming and outgoing messages which costs some CPU cycles. This would make Openfire a much more XMPP compliant server.

 

LG

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