Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/13180 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: database system Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: chx Reported by: chx Updated by: Steven Status: patch Actually, Drupal does nothing to ensure the database character set is set to UTF-8 (can it?). Thus, escaping with mysql_real_escape_string() is not advised. Steven Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ November 19, 2004 - 21:35 : chx Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/check_output_patch.txt (1.54 KB) The check_query documentation says 'Prepare user input for use in a database query, preventing SQL injection attacks.' But the code itself is a simple addslashes. This is simply not correct -- for mysql, yes, but the world is not just mysql. There are _escape_string functions for that: mysql_escape_string, pg_escape_string, sqlite_escape_string... Read the manual for pg_escape_string: "Use of this function is recommended instead of addslashes()." Or read sqlite_escape_string: "addslashes() should NOT be used to quote your strings for SQLite queries; it will lead to strange results when retrieving your data." Ooooops. So I propose moving check_query() declaration from bootstrap.inc to database.*.inc. I've already written a letter to the devel list about this, but drumm said "code is better than talk" so here is a patch. At this moment, this does absolutely nothing, only opens the possibility to use the aforementioned escape_string functions. But database.sqlite.inc simply will not work without this change. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ November 19, 2004 - 21:42 : drumm Looks straightfoward enough. Is there any reason to not put in pg_escape_string() now? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ November 19, 2004 - 21:47 : chx Actually, yes. Read on the mentioned manual page: "Note: This function requires PostgreSQL 7.2 or later." I have no idea how the check it. There is a pg_version() but I will leave this postgres business to someone who has a working postgres install to code and check this thing. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ November 19, 2004 - 22:58 : Chris Johnson PostgreSQL 7.2 was released February 4, 2002. Major production releases 73. and 7.4, along with many point releases, have been issued since then. Current production is 7.4.6 and 8.0 is in the 4th revision of beta. It seems pretty safe to assume that any Drupal installation using PostgreSQL would have version 7.2 or later. Document if a user encounters errors with PostgreSQL that they need to check the version is 7.2 or later. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ November 20, 2004 - 15:42 : Dries +1 I suggest creating a db_escape_string() function, and removing check_query() all together. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ November 20, 2004 - 15:55 : Goba +1 on Dries ------------------------------------------------------------------------ November 20, 2004 - 19:32 : chx Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/check_output_patch_0.txt (1.6 KB) db_escape_string sounds find to me, it's really a better name, thanks Dries. But removing check_query? I'd suggest deprecating it and removing it later. I am afraid It would break a lot of custom modules. Here is a slightly modified patch with pg_escape_string included and documented. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ November 20, 2004 - 19:43 : killes@www.drop.org We were never afraid of breakign things for the good of the project. Please don't change this policy. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ November 20, 2004 - 20:26 : chx Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/db_escape_string.txt (20.87 KB) Let's do it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ November 20, 2004 - 20:29 : chx Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/db_escape_string_0.txt (20.88 KB) Something funny happened to the PostgreSQL db_escape_string comment and I have missed it, sorry. Reposting the patch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ November 21, 2004 - 10:29 : Dries I committed the patch. Thanks chx. Keep it coming. I've also updated the upgrade notes at http://drupal.org/node/12347. I'll update some contributed modules unless someone objects. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ November 21, 2004 - 13:27 : chx Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/mysql_escape_patch.txt (572 bytes) Keep it coming? Well, let's see the MySQL case... It's far from being trivial, and I expect some controversy over it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 10, 2005 - 01:36 : chx Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/mysql_escape_patch_0.txt (573 bytes) OK, here is mysql version a bit corrected, this should get into 4.6 -- addslashes is not a correct way any more. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 10, 2005 - 20:29 : Dries Can we read up on that somewhere? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 10, 2005 - 20:37 : Goba Dries, sure: http://php.net/mysql_escape_string [1] and http://php.net/mysql_real_escape_string [2]. The latter also uses the connections charset settings to properly escape, so it is the best (but is not available in old PHP versions). The addslashes page user notes also have more information [3]. [1] http://php.net/mysql_escape_string [2] http://php.net/mysql_real_escape_string [3] http://hu.php.net/addslashes#20013 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 12, 2005 - 10:50 : Dries addslashes() has been working for ages (and is simpler code-wise). I guess the mysql_ functions are slightly more secure or not even that? That aside, I'm not really a big fan of version_compare()s. Also note that the patch violates Drupal's coding standards (again) but that's easy enough to fix. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 13, 2005 - 21:49 : chx I can only repeat what Goba said: . mysql_real_escape_string uses the connections charset settings to properly escape, so it is the best (but is not available in old PHP versions).