[SOLR-3161] Use of 'qt' should be restricted to searching and should not start with a '/'

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 3.6, 4.0-ALPHA
• Component/s: Admin UI, search
• Assignee: David Smiley
• Reporter: David Smiley
• Created: 24/Feb/12 18:59
• Updated: 08/Jul/19 16:40
• Resolved: 09/Jun/12 05:13

Description

I haven't yet looked at the code involved for suggestions here; I'm speaking based on how I think things should work and not work, based on intuitiveness and security. In general I feel it is best practice to use '/' leading request handler names and not use "qt", but I don't hate it enough when used in limited (search-only) circumstances to propose its demise. But if someone proposes its deprecation that then I am +1 for that.

Here is my proposal:

Solr should error if the parameter "qt" is supplied with a leading '/'. (trunk only)
Solr should only honor "qt" if the target request handler extends solr.SearchHandler.
The new admin UI should only use 'qt' when it has to. For the query screen, it could present a little pop-up menu of handlers to choose from, including "/select?qt=mycustom" for handlers that aren't named with a leading '/'. This choice should be positioned at the top.
And before I forget, me or someone should investigate if there are any similar security problems with the shards.qt parameter. Perhaps shards.qt can abide by the same rules outlined above.

Does anyone foresee any problems with this proposal?

On a related subject, I think the notion of a default request handler is bad - the default="true" thing. Honestly I'm not sure what it does, since I noticed Solr trunk redirects '/solr/' to the new admin UI at '/solr/#/'. Assuming it doesn't do anything useful anymore, I think it would be clearer to use <requestHandler name="/select" class="solr.SearchHandler"> instead of what's there now. The delta is to put the leading '/' on this request handler name, and remove the "default" attribute.

Issue Links

• breaks: SOLR-1233 Remove restriction that /select cannot be used for /-prefixed request handlers via qt
• is broken by: SOLR-3317 Admin UI: Improve request handler / qt in query form
• is related to: SOLR-10564 NPE in QueryComponent when RTG
• relates to: SOLR-3346 qt Dispatching Request Handler