Re: [Slashcode-general] attaching files/content to stories

[Clifton W. <cli...@gm...>]

On 9/14/06, shane <sh...@lo...> wrote:
>
>
> Can you elaborate on this a little bit? I don't see where the problem
> would lie. My thinking is that it's different from a .tmpl file.


Basically, once you can write template code, the potential for being able to
co-opt a site is very, very high. Template code == Database access with the
right plugin. I don't think Slash tries to prevent against that. Plus, it's
very easy for a template to perform one query too many and drive down site
performance. If this is done for -every story view-, you might be a long
time in finding the problem.

Of course, I'm being paranoid and extremist in my examples, but rather
prepare you for the worst rather than hand you a pair of rose-colored
glasses and have everything fall apart.

The one obstacle I could see is the pre-rendering of the stories.
> Slashd writes them to disk as .shtml's, so there'd be no question,
> it'd just ignore the template toolkit code within the story.introtext
> and bodytext.


For .shtmls, yes. This might be true, however that's ONLY if you are
planning on using templates-in-stories for anonymous vs logged in content.
If you have bigger things in mind, even .shtml generation might bring up
some issues.


> But when a user hits articles.pl does it show pre-rendered (from
> cache) or render it right then and there? If right then and there, it
> would seem the template running would be no different from a .tmpl
> and it'd be limited to the current user.


I'm not quite up-to-speed on the entire pre-rendering mechanism, but I
*think* the pre-rendered form is shown in normal site operation for logged
in users. This might cause problems for non-saavy users who are expecting
more dynamic content from the implication of templates-in-stories.


> Obviously, you'd have to fully trust your site admins (ie authors)
> with writing template toolkit code. That in itself is kinda scary.


And that's pretty much what I was referring to. Remember, if you include the
ability to write templates in stories, a bad apple need only break into the
*site* to potentially damage the entire server. For someone to abuse .tmpl
files, they'd have to break into the *server*, which while also doable is a
bit more difficult.

It basically all boils down to a matter of trust.

And having admins write (potentially bad) template code can make debugging site
problems two to three times as hard. Even innocent stuff like  missing "-%>"
can cause really wacky things to happen and it's not like the site admin can
browse the error logs to find out the problem.

All in all, I see less gains than issues with doing such things without  a
lot of learning curve, proper training, and huge amounts of trust before
something would be gained by such a thing. Not saying it might not be a
worthwhile addition to a sight run by a tight core group of editors (which
is why I included a way it *might* work in my original missive), but that it
might not be something that only the saaviest of Slashcode site admins need
consider.

- Cliff