Re: Proxying internationalised URLs in EZproxy config.txt (proposed new warning)

I’d never heard about punycode before and have now just read the Wikipedia article. That’s… slightly terrifying.

I would support the proposed error message, but what I’d support even more would be for OCLC to just fix EZproxy to allow non-ASCII characters. I don’t know how complex this might be but it seems like a better long-term solution than punycode.

Deborah

From: EZproxy List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Stuart Yeates
Sent: Friday, 29 November 2019 11:12 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [EZPROXY-L] Proxying internationalised URLs in EZproxy config.txt (proposed new warning)

In New Zealand have an official language (te reo Te Reo Māori) which includes non-ASCII characters. Our national TLD .nz has allowed these characters to appear in domain names for almost ten years. I recently tried to add one of these to EZproxy and it didn't work. Unfortunately it's non-workingness was silent: EZproxy silently truncated the line at the 'bad' character but still entered the truncated hostname into it's database. The real fix for this is to use punycode to escape the non-ASCII characters, but it's hard to know that this is the fix unless (a) you know things are broken and (b) that punycode exists.

I would like to to suggest a new error message to handle this situation:

"2019-11-29 10:54:32 Truncated at 'viewer.wair' due to non-ASCII character. If this is an internationalized domain name, use punycode."

Below is the example I had.

cheers
stuart

Old config.txt:

Title VUW Library Rosetta viewer (Special order-dependent stanza)
URL http://vuwunicolibevp1.ods.vuw.ac.nz<http://vuwunicolibevp1.ods.vuw.ac.nz>
HJ https://vuwunicolibevp1.ods.vuw.ac.nz<https://vuwunicolibevp1.ods.vuw.ac.nz>
HJ http://viewer.waireto.victoria.ac.nz<http://viewer.waireto.victoria.ac.nz>
HJ https://viewer.waireto.victoria.ac.nz<https://viewer.waireto.victoria.ac.nz>
HJ http://viewer.wairētō.victoria.ac.nz<http://viewer.wairētō.victoria.ac.nz>
HJ https://viewer.wairētō.victoria.ac.nz<https://viewer.wairētō.victoria.ac.nz>

What appeared in /status :

HJ viewer.wair:443
HJ viewer.wair:80
HJ http://viewer.waireto.victoria.ac.nz:443<http://viewer.waireto.victoria.ac.nz:443>
HJ http://viewer.waireto.victoria.ac.nz:80<http://viewer.waireto.victoria.ac.nz:80>
HJ http://vuwunicolibevp1.ods.vuw.ac.nz:443<http://vuwunicolibevp1.ods.vuw.ac.nz:443>
H http://vuwunicolibevp1.ods.vuw.ac.nz:80<http://vuwunicolibevp1.ods.vuw.ac.nz:80>

Fixed config.txt:

Title VUW Library Rosetta viewer (Special order-dependent stanza)
URL http://vuwunicolibevp1.ods.vuw.ac.nz<http://vuwunicolibevp1.ods.vuw.ac.nz>
HJ https://vuwunicolibevp1.ods.vuw.ac.nz<https://vuwunicolibevp1.ods.vuw.ac.nz>
HJ http://viewer.waireto.victoria.ac.nz<http://viewer.waireto.victoria.ac.nz>
HJ https://viewer.waireto.victoria.ac.nz<https://viewer.waireto.victoria.ac.nz>
HJ http://viewer.xn--wairt-lza12b.victoria.ac.nz<http://viewer.xn--wairt-lza12b.victoria.ac.nz>
HJ https://viewer.xn--wairt-lza12b.victoria.ac.nz<https://viewer.xn--wairt-lza12b.victoria.ac.nz>

What appears in /status:

HJ http://viewer.xn--wairt-lza12b.victoria.ac.nz:443<http://viewer.xn--wairt-lza12b.victoria.ac.nz:443>
HJ http://viewer.xn--wairt-lza12b.victoria.ac.nz:80<http://viewer.xn--wairt-lza12b.victoria.ac.nz:80>
HJ http://viewer.waireto.victoria.ac.nz:443<http://viewer.waireto.victoria.ac.nz:443>
HJ http://viewer.waireto.victoria.ac.nz:80<http://viewer.waireto.victoria.ac.nz:80>
HJ http://vuwunicolibevp1.ods.vuw.ac.nz:443<http://vuwunicolibevp1.ods.vuw.ac.nz:443>
H http://vuwunicolibevp1.ods.vuw.ac.nz:80<http://vuwunicolibevp1.ods.vuw.ac.nz:80>

Ngā mihi
stuart

--
Stuart Yeates
Library Technology Specialist
Victoria University of Wellington
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>



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