MeTa throws up an error when given a bad link

July 28, 2002 10:49 PM

Following a link from mini-wetlog I found a bug where MeTa throws up an error when given a bad link. In this case a quote on the end of the URL:

http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/2418"

posted by southisup to Bugs at 10:49 PM (13 comments total)

Rather than start a new thread, I'll add to this one that this kind of (admittedly typed-in) URL throws an error as well :

http://www.metafilter.com/user.mefi/stavrosthewonderchicken

username.mefi works fine.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:53 PM on July 28, 2002

The url linked from the wetlog has an extra ", it's not a MeFi error, it's an error in the link. You can view the discussion here.

Stavros, the username feature works only with username.mefi, user.mefi is for user IDs.
posted by riffola at 11:03 PM on July 28, 2002

Okay, so this was an excellent debug. For my site. Yay! Thanks southisup!
posted by Neale at 11:27 PM on July 28, 2002

I realise the link is bad, but MeTa should 404 it, not give a database error.
posted by southisup at 11:28 PM on July 28, 2002

It's not bad anymore, but for anyone who missed it:

here it is again.

.
.
posted by Neale at 11:32 PM on July 28, 2002

go to the "posted by" to see it and the SQL error.
posted by Neale at 11:33 PM on July 28, 2002

you can't 404 a file that exists...
posted by sawks at 11:40 PM on July 28, 2002

Thanks Neale. I tried to make a clickable link to demo the problem, but MeTa kept fixing it.

I also tried to email you about it but got a bounce.

sawks: There must be a way of gracefully dealing with the problem though, rather than returning a stack dump, don't you think?
posted by southisup at 11:41 PM on July 28, 2002

I also tried to email you about it but got a bounce.

This is due to my zero-email tolerance policy.

I haven't had mail from wetlog in a month thanks to my bounce-everything policy!
posted by Neale at 11:56 PM on July 28, 2002

I haven't had mail from wetlog in a month thanks to my bounce-everything policy!

Clever! I believe that you have solved the Worldwide Spam Crisis!
posted by iceberg273 at 9:21 AM on July 29, 2002

I realise the link is bad, but MeTa should 404 it, not give a database error.

I hope you realise that checking for incorrect links, malformed data on pages not meant for it (like starvos' "problem") are way, way, way down on the list of things worth spending time on fixing.

I'm just a guy who can barely program my way out of a paper bag. If someone purposely posts a malformed link and gets errors, so be it. Anyone posting links on their blog should test their links before publishing. I don't know what to say about starvos' comment, since there is not a single instance anywhere on the site of a link as he described (he had to type it in to get it).

Honestly, if I considered myself a real application programmer or was paid 70k a year to keep this site running and representing a business, I might program to handle all these exceptions. Even a site like macromedia suffers from similar errors.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:02 AM on July 29, 2002

Absolutely no criticism intended Matt. I posted the 'bug' because I'm not used to finding anything wrong here, and was surprised at the error message. Sorry for hassling you.
posted by southisup at 12:59 AM on July 30, 2002

Hey, Matt, don't blow a gasket there, cap'n.

I didn't describe that behaviour as a 'problem', did I?

I just thought I'd add that puppy into the thread, as I noticed it seconds before this thread appeared. I had thought that a different behaviour had been exhibited before, and that something had broken, but clearly I was mistaken and just having a brain fart.

I really don't give a rat's posterior if you do anything about it or not. Just thought I might possibly be helping you out by noting it, and as you seem to be the redirect King with all the http://fillsomethinginhere.metafilter.com stuff, I thought for a moment that something that had worked before (which clearly I imagined) might have busted.

I'll exercise more restraint in my attempts to be of assistance in the future.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:23 AM on July 30, 2002