Unexpected exception from socket.getaddrinfo on Unicode URL

J

John Nagle

Here's a strange little bug. "socket.getaddrinfo" blows up
if given a bad domain name containing ".." in Unicode. The
same string in ASCII produces the correct "gaierror" exception.

Actually, this deserves a documentation mention. The "socket" module,
given a Unicode string, calls the International Domain Name parser,
"idna.py", which has a a whole error system of its own. The IDNA
documentation says that "Furthermore, the socket module transparently converts
Unicode host names to ACE, so that applications need not be concerned about
converting host names themselves when they pass them to the socket module."
However, that's not quite true; the IDNA rules say that syntax errors must
be treated as errors, so you have to be prepared for IDNA exceptions.
They are all "UnicodeError" exceptions.

It's worth a mention in the documentation for "socket".

John Nagle

D:\>/python25/python.exe
Python 2.5 (r25:51908, Sep 19 2006, 09:52:17) [MSC v.1310 32 bit (Intel)] on win
32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.Traceback (most recent call last):
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
File "D:\python25\lib\encodings\idna.py", line 164, in encode
result.append(ToASCII(label))
File "D:\python25\lib\encodings\idna.py", line 73, in ToASCII
raise UnicodeError("label empty or too long")
UnicodeError: label empty or too long
 
S

Steve Holden

John said:
Here's a strange little bug. "socket.getaddrinfo" blows up
if given a bad domain name containing ".." in Unicode. The
same string in ASCII produces the correct "gaierror" exception.

Actually, this deserves a documentation mention. The "socket" module,
given a Unicode string, calls the International Domain Name parser,
"idna.py", which has a a whole error system of its own. The IDNA
documentation says that "Furthermore, the socket module transparently converts
Unicode host names to ACE, so that applications need not be concerned about
converting host names themselves when they pass them to the socket module."
However, that's not quite true; the IDNA rules say that syntax errors must
be treated as errors, so you have to be prepared for IDNA exceptions.
They are all "UnicodeError" exceptions.

It's worth a mention in the documentation for "socket".

John Nagle

D:\>/python25/python.exe
Python 2.5 (r25:51908, Sep 19 2006, 09:52:17) [MSC v.1310 32 bit (Intel)] on win
32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.Traceback (most recent call last):
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
File "D:\python25\lib\encodings\idna.py", line 164, in encode
result.append(ToASCII(label))
File "D:\python25\lib\encodings\idna.py", line 73, in ToASCII
raise UnicodeError("label empty or too long")
UnicodeError: label empty or too long
I took a look at the documentation but couldn't see where to add what,
given that the documentation for socket already says:

"""All errors raise exceptions. The normal exceptions for invalid
argument types and out-of-memory conditions can be raised; errors
related to socket or address semantics raise the error socket.error.
""".

Do we really need to specifically mention Unicode errors?

regards
Steve
 
J

John Nagle

Steve said:
John said:
Here's a strange little bug. "socket.getaddrinfo" blows up
if given a bad domain name containing ".." in Unicode. The
same string in ASCII produces the correct "gaierror" exception.

Actually, this deserves a documentation mention. The "socket"
module,
given a Unicode string, calls the International Domain Name parser,
"idna.py", which has a a whole error system of its own. The IDNA
documentation says that "Furthermore, the socket module transparently
converts Unicode host names to ACE, so that applications need not be
concerned about converting host names themselves when they pass them
to the socket module."
However, that's not quite true; the IDNA rules say that syntax errors
must
be treated as errors, so you have to be prepared for IDNA exceptions.
They are all "UnicodeError" exceptions.

It's worth a mention in the documentation for "socket".

John Nagle

D:\>/python25/python.exe
Python 2.5 (r25:51908, Sep 19 2006, 09:52:17) [MSC v.1310 32 bit
(Intel)] on win
32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
ss = 'www.gallery84..com'
uss = unicode(ss)
import socket
socket.getaddrinfo(ss,"http")
Traceback (most recent call last):
File said:
socket.getaddrinfo(uss,"http")
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
File "D:\python25\lib\encodings\idna.py", line 164, in encode
result.append(ToASCII(label))
File "D:\python25\lib\encodings\idna.py", line 73, in ToASCII
raise UnicodeError("label empty or too long")
UnicodeError: label empty or too long
I took a look at the documentation but couldn't see where to add what,
given that the documentation for socket already says:

"""All errors raise exceptions. The normal exceptions for invalid
argument types and out-of-memory conditions can be raised; errors
related to socket or address semantics raise the error socket.error.
""".

Do we really need to specifically mention Unicode errors?

It says "errors related to socket or address semantics raise the
error 'socket.error'", so, yes. The error really has nothing to
do with Unicode; it's that a different parser is used when a domain
name is in Unicode. It really shouldn't be a "Unicode error" at
all.

When Python goes to Unicode by default, this is likely to break
some existing code. Python's IDNA support is good, but not entirely
invisible. The socket module documentation should mention IDNA
support. It's not clear, for example, when you call "getnameinfo()",
whether you get back the name in Unicode or in Punycode.

John Nagle
 

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