@Krinkle pointed out that https://w.wiki/?search=X actually loads the search results from Meta-Wiki because the search query parameter overrides MediaWiki's normal request handling, and the UrlShortener redirect. I don't think anything bad can happen from loading MediaWiki on a non-MediaWiki domain, but I'd rather just not.
@BBlack, can we just strip all the query parameters in varnish? Basically just limit valid requests to / and /shortcode, and ignore everything else?
| Status | Assigned | Task | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Resolved | Ladsgroup | T44085 Wikimedia needs a URL shortener (tracking) | ||
| Resolved | Smalyshev | T112715 Enable different URL shorteners for WDQS | ||
| Resolved | Ladsgroup | T108557 Review and deploy UrlShortener extension to Wikimedia wikis | ||
| Resolved | BBlack | T141170 Strip query parameters from w.wiki domain |
Yeah. As a first pass, we could simply strip URLs with s/\?.*$//. If shortcode is a pretty restricted subset, it might make more sense just go ahead and fully regex-validate that part too.
The shortcode set is 23456789ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijkmnopqrstuvwxyz$_. It's basically static and won't be changing once we enable the shortener for everyone.
Looks like base36 in the specs, up to 9 total characters (3x wiki id, 6x article id). We could restrict legal urls to ^/[0-9A-Z]{0,9}$. Is it always uppercase? Does the extension accept/normalize lowercase as well?
It is [0-9A-Za-z$\-] with 0, O, I, l, and 1 removed because they're visually confusing when written down. And yes, it is case-sensitive.
Oh, and there is no max length, we'll keep generating longer ids as people keep shortening new URLs...
Ok I basically get it. But in the two different explanations, one has - and one has _ ...?
Ok. Either way, when I count up both representations, I get 59 total characters, does that sound right?
Change 302354 had a related patch set uploaded (by BBlack):
text VCL: validate w.wiki short URLs
@BBlack this doesn't seem to be working yet? https://w.wiki/?search=X still shows search results...and https://w.wiki/IiO0o which has the non-whitelisted characters is showing the MW-generated error,
Yeah I checked as well, and it doesn't work. Most likely the simple patch is subtly broken...
Change 302752 had a related patch set uploaded (by BBlack):
Text VCL: validate w.wiki URLs (for real this time)