[icedtea-web] RFC: PR766 javaws fails to parse an <argument> node that contains CDATA

[Deepak Bhole]

* Omair Majid <omajid at redhat.com> [2011-09-22 14:55]:
> On 09/22/2011 01:48 PM, Deepak Bhole wrote:
> >* Omair Majid<omajid at redhat.com>  [2011-09-21 16:49]:
> >>On 09/19/2011 01:44 PM, Omair Majid wrote:
> >>>On 09/19/2011 01:01 PM, Deepak Bhole wrote:
> >>>>* Omair Majid<omajid at redhat.com>  [2011-09-16 18:03]:
> >...
> >...
> >>>If you mean the parser in icedtea-web chokes on CDATA sections (or
> >>>handles these CDATA sections differently) - as shown in the test results
> >>>- then yes, that might be a problem. As stated above I intend to write a
> >>>patch with additional tests for this. As an additional precaution, I
> >>>would like to avoid backporting this patch to any of the release branches.
> >>>
> >>
> >>So I spent some time looking into it and it turns out that the
> >>version of NanoXML that we use does not support mixed content [1] -
> >>so it's not a problem with using CDATA sections, it's a problem with
> >>intermixing text and elements.
> >>
> >>The good news is that JNLP files should not contain mixed content.
> >>Nothing the Oracle's docs [2] suggests that mixed content can occur
> >>in JNLP files. Perhaps another thing to consider is that we have not
> >>seen any bugs filed about problems in jnlp files caused by mixed
> >>content. So this should not occur in practice.
> >>
> >>Of course, I could implement this, but it turns out that
> >>NanoXML/Lite (which is what was embedded in netx) does not support
> >>that pretty much by design [3]. NanoXML/Java does support that [3],
> >>but I am hesitant to swap out our parser like this. And if I were
> >>swapping out the parser, I would rather use a parser meant to handle
> >>malformed XML documents - like tagsoup [4] - along with a
> >>well-tested XML parser.
> >>
> >>In fact, after considering the matter, I would like push just the
> >>two patches I posted earlier in this thread and close the bug.
> >>
> >>Any thoughts or comments?
> >>
> >
> >Sorry if I'm missing something, but don't we still need a patch to
> >JNLPMatcher to make it not fail when presented with CDATA?
> >
> 
> I suppose I was not very clear. JNLPMatcher - actually XMLElement
> (our parser) - fails when presented with mixed content. Whether that
> content is just plain text or text escaped using CDATA sections
> doesnt matter. The attached patch converts CDATA section to plain
> text and the test still fails (after apply the two patches I posted
> earlier in the thread).
> 
> JNLPMatcher (and XMLElement) work when text is escaped using CDATA
> sections in the absence of mixed content.
> 
> Since we have never seen failures caused by mixed content using
> plain text, I suppose we can assume that failures wont be caused by
> mixed content containing text escaped using CDATA sections.
> 
> Hope that clears things up.
>

Ah, sorry. I thought it didn't work at all. Didn't realize that it was
just mixed content that made it fail.

Okay then, I am fine with these patches in HEAD and closing the issue.

Cheers,
Deepak