When I submit a single space in Citoid's automatic citation feature, it actually generates a seemingly random reference for me:
This works on all wikis where this particular Citoid feature is enabled. The result is different on every wiki. Probably random.
The issues in isolation:
- Why can the user submit a whitespace-only value? The button should be blocked.
- Why does the backend service accept a whitespace-only value? It already rejects empty values, see https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/data/citation/mediawiki//.
- The request https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/data/citation/mediawiki/%20 often times out. Why is that?
- Why are there all these "null" strings? This doesn't seem right. Which code converts nulls to strings?
[ { "itemType": "journalArticle", "DOI": "10.58809/gdnr8407", "title": "Empowering Schools and Family", "publicationTitle": "John Heinrichs Scholarly & Creative Activities Day", "date": "2017", "url": "https://doi.org/10.58809/gdnr8407", "accessDate": "2025-12-09", "author": [ [ "Jude", "Loste" ], [ "null", "null" ], [ "null", "null" ], [ "null", "null" ], [ "null", "null" ], [ "null", "null" ] ], "source": [ "Crossref" ] } ]