[COUCHDB-2673] "Location" header in HTTP response should properly encode the document _id

• Type: Bug
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 1.6.1
• Fix Version/s: 2.0.0, 1.7.0
• Component/s: HTTP Interface
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Samuel Tardieu
• Created: 25/Apr/15 21:55
• Updated: 27/Oct/15 21:51
• Resolved: 29/Jun/15 18:57

Description

When inserting a document in a CouchDB 1.6.1 database, the response sent by CouchDB contains a "Location" HTTP header with the URI of the newly created document.

However, if the "_id" of the new document contains non-ASCII characters, this "Location" header is not properly encoded.

Example:

 % curl -v -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST http://localhost:5984/test/ --data '{"_id": "xxxé"}'
*   Trying ::1...
* Connected to localhost (::1) port 5984 (#0)
> POST /test/ HTTP/1.1
> Host: localhost:5984
> User-Agent: curl/7.42.0
> Accept: */*
> Content-Type: application/json
> Content-Length: 16
> 
* upload completely sent off: 16 out of 16 bytes
< HTTP/1.1 201 Created
< Server: CouchDB/1.6.1 (Erlang OTP/17)
< Location: http://localhost:5984/test/xxxé
< ETag: "1-967a00dff5e02add41819138abb3284d"
< Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2015 21:33:04 GMT
< Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
< Content-Length: 68
< Cache-Control: must-revalidate
< 
{"ok":true,"id":"xxxé","rev":"1-967a00dff5e02add41819138abb3284d"}

According to RFC 2616 ("HTTP headers only contain ASCII") and RFC 2396 ("here is how to construct an URI from ASCII characters"), the "Location" header should be formatted as:

Location: http://localhost:5984/test/xxx%C3%A9

The "spray.io" framework warns against this invalid response when doing such a request towards a CouchDB database.