Re: users using &, ", ', and other chars in input fields

The users will cry, bitch, moan, groan, and other stuff if their ampersands gets stripped out.

That's what I am asking.

Am I hearing that the predominate "fix" is to strip out characters like &, ", and others?

Mike

"Daniel Morgan" <damorgan_at_x.washington.edu> wrote in message news:1075442605.684654_at_yasure...
> Chris O wrote:
>
> > "Daniel Morgan" <damorgan_at_x.washington.edu> wrote in message
> > news:1075422191.224621_at_yasure...
> >
> >>Michael Hill wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>I have a general question about how people generally tend to deal with
> >>>users data that they enter.
> >>>
> >>>As an example users enter double quotes in a text field surrounding a
> >>>specific piece of text they want to hi-lite and then it barfs during
the
> >>>oracle insert step because the string is not properly delimited.
> >>>
> >>>Another example is where the ampersand causes trouble when used on an
> >>>xml page so provisions are made to insert it into the table using the
> >>>ascii equavalent &amp; . But the field is only 25 characters so when a
> >>>string with 25 characters that has an ampersand is being input and we
> >>>change the ampersand to the ascii equavalent we now have more then 25
> >>>characters and update fails beacuse we have too many characters. We
> >>>could truncate them before the insert, or we could write some code to
> >>>deal with them onthe client.
> >>>
> >>>Others copy and paste from word documents into a text field and in it
> >>>there are hidden formatting fields like bullets.
> >>>
> >>>The users barf and complain about the application, but what we have
here
> >>>is bad data.
> >>>
> >>>How do most handle these?
> >>>
> >>>Mike
> >>
> >>The TRANSLATE function.
> >>
> >>--
> >>Daniel Morgan
> >>http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/oad/oad_crs.asp
> >>http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/aoa/aoa_crs.asp
> >>damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
> >>(replace 'x' with a 'u' to reply)
> >>
> >
> > Daniel. I agreed but I would go further to suggest that the preferred
> > approach [depending on the tool] would be to not build the SQL
dynamically
> > but rather to use a bind variable. Only as a last resort should the
dynamic
> > SQL be used.
> >
> > Michael you might want to check out Pete Finnigan's articles on SQL
> > Injection: http://www.petefinnigan.com/orasec.htm
> >
> > Cheers Chris
>
> I see no evidence of dynamic SQL having anything to do with the OP's
> question. Perhaps this is my error but what I saw was:
>
> SQL> CREATE TABLE test (
> 2 testcol VARCHAR2(20));
>
> SQL> insert into test values (TRANSLATE('ABC&DEF', 'A&', 'A'));
>
> 1 row created.
>
> SQL> select * from test;
>
> TESTCOL
> --------------------
> ABCDEF
>
> SQL>
>
> Ampersand stripped out.
>
> --
> Daniel Morgan
> http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/oad/oad_crs.asp
> http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/aoa/aoa_crs.asp
> damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
> (replace 'x' with a 'u' to reply)
>
Received on Fri Jan 30 2004 - 08:43:56 CST