Home » HTTP » HTTP_WebDAV_Server » Bug #4971

[2005-08-02 15:01 UTC] wrandels at hsw dot fhz dot ch

Description:
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Function _urlencode() does a very minimalistic encoding of URLS. Unfortunately the encoding is insufficient for use with international filenames.

On Windows XP, if a filename contains both space characters and non-ascii characters, such as an "ä" (lower case character a with diaeresis), then the WebDAV client of Windows XP displays the space character as the following character sequence "%20".

On Mac OS X, the WebDAV client suppresses all filenames that have non-ascii characters.

Test script:
---------------
I changed the _urlencode() function into the following to alleviate the problem:

function _urlencode($path)
{
$c = explode('/', $path);
for ($i = 0; $i < count($c); $i++)
{
$c[$i] = str_replace('+','%20',urlencode($c[$i]));
}
return implode('/', $c);
}

Expected result:
----------------
The code snippet above fixes the issue.

However, it does not fix cross-platform issues when using international filenames on Mac OS X and Windows XP.
Mac OS X encodes international filenames using the Unicode Normalization Form D (NFD) whereas Windows XP uses Unicode Normalization Form C (NFC).

It appears that the WebDAV client in Mac OS X can deal with both normalization forms, but it will always submit NFD encoded names to the server.
The WebDAV client in Windows XP treats a name encoded with NFD as a different name as when it is encoded using NFC.

To fix the normalization form issue, I have found that it is best, to always normalize resource names to NFC before sending them in a reply to the client.
I am not sure though, whether normalization shall be addressed by the abstract Pear Server class, or whether it shall be handled by a concrete sublcass.