Re: [Htmlparser-developer] Pinpointing a bug in attribute parsing

[Somik R. <so...@ya...>]

Sounds like an AttributeParser bug.. You could write a test that provides
this input, and asserts the expected output - in AttributeParserTest (look
at the other tests). Then, file a bug report, and choose the category
"AttributeParser". Kaarle Kaila will dive in to the rescue.

Regards,
Somik
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joseph Robins" <jmr...@tg...>
To: <htm...@li...>
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2003 12:17 PM
Subject: [Htmlparser-developer] Pinpointing a bug in attribute parsing


> I've run into an issue using the parser, and I'd like to file a bug, but
> I'd like some input as to which parts of the parser behavior are really
> wrong.
>
> What I'm actually doing is parsing a page more than once.  I download a
> page, parse it to remove a few unwanted tags, and output the results by
> calling toHtml() on all the nodes I want to keep.  Later in the
> application, I parse the page again, making some changes to some
> StringNodes.
>
> The problem is that these consecutive parses lead to mangled HTML.  The
> output of the second parse doesn't match the output of the first.  In
> particular, the problem that I'm having is with tags which have
> standalone attributes.  For example, if I have a tag:
>
>      <SOMETAG FOO1="BAR1" FOO2="BAR2" FOO3>
>
> FOO3 is a standalone attribute, which is perfectly valid in HTML.  Many
> common tags use standalone attributes, like CHECKED on a checkbox,
> DISABLED on a text input, or NOWRAP on a table cell.  The parser doesn't
> seem to like standalones, though, and assigns it an empty string as a
> value, so calling toHtml() gets me the result:
>
>      <SOMETAG FOO1="BAR1" FOO3="" FOO2="BAR2">
>
> This seems wrong to me, but would not itself be disastrous.  However,
> there also appears to be a bug in the parser such that it doesn't like
> empty-string values for attributes, and toHtml() chokes on them.  If I
> run this first result through the parser again, calling toHtml() now
> gets me:
>
>      <SOMETAG FOO1="BAR1" FOO3="">
>
> This is clearly wrong.  I've lost the attribute FOO2 and its value
entirely.
>
> It would seem to me that parsing a page and producing HTML output should
> be consistent over multiple runs.  If I have output from the parser, the
> parser should consider all of that to be valid HTML, and should produce
> identical output if the results are run through it again.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> _____________________________________________________________
> Joe Robins Tel:   212-918-5057
> Thaumaturgix, Inc. Fax:   212-918-5001
> 19 W. 44th St., 18th Floor Email: jmr...@tg...
> New York, NY 10036 http://www.tgix.com
>
> thau'ma-tur-gy, n. the working of miracles.
>
>
>
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