encoding newlines in attribute values

Josh Hoyt josh at janrain.com
Thu Apr 19 17:46:57 UTC 2007


On 4/19/07, Marius Scurtescu <marius at sxip.com> wrote:
> I think we do need pre-URL-encoding, mainly because of signatures. In
> order to calculate the signature the parameters must be put together
> in a special way and new line characters are not allowed.

Yes. The key-value encoding that's used for POST responses (to
associate and check_authentication) is also used in signature
generation. This is the source of the restriction on newlines in
values, not anything to do with URL encoding.

Each attribute already has to define its encoding rules and data-type.
The mechanism for encoding a newline can be part of this encoding, if
newlines are allowed in the value. Once there is one attribute that
has a defined encoding for newline, when new attributes are defined,
they can re-use this encoding. Does that sound reasonable?

Josh



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