Bug 18951 – all DOM operations stop working when location.hash set to '#'

• Status: RESOLVED
• Resolution: FIXED
• Component: New Bugs

[Nick Santos]

The following javascript code:

     window.location.hash = '#b=BBB';

     var node = document.createElement('span');
     node.innerHTML = 'Safari ';
     document.body.appendChild(node);

     window.location.hash = '#';
  
     var node2 = document.createElement('span');
     node2.innerHTML = 'can\'t take the heat!';
     document.body.appendChild(node2);

makes all subsequent DOM operations fail. Weird.

[Mark Rowe (bdash)]

<rdar://problem/5921760>

[Feng Qian]

KURL::setRef drops "#" if the hash string is empty, but FF appends '#' to the end of URL.

Is it safe to just append "#" to new url even when the hash string is empty?

[Feng Qian]

I tried this patch on my local build, and it fixes the issue described by Nick.
Does this change has side-effect? and why '#' makes difference?

Index: KURL.cpp
===================================================================
--- KURL.cpp	(revision 32987)
+++ KURL.cpp	(working copy)
@@ -705,7 +705,7 @@ void KURL::setRef(const String& s)
 {
     if (!m_isValid)
         return;
-    parse(m_string.left(m_queryEnd) + (s.isEmpty() ? "" : "#" + s));
+    parse(m_string.left(m_queryEnd) + "#" + s);
 }

[Brett Wilson (Google)]

You could change the setter to clear the # when you pass a NULL string, but make the ref empty (leaving the #) when you pass an empty string. I think this pattern would be good to use for the other setters as well (at least, the query) so that "foo?" and "foo" can be differentiated in the setter.

[Feng Qian]

(In reply to comment #4)
> You could change the setter to clear the # when you pass a NULL string, but
> make the ref empty (leaving the #) when you pass an empty string. I think this
> pattern would be good to use for the other setters as well (at least, the
> query) so that "foo?" and "foo" can be differentiated in the setter.
> 

That's good point. What's the difference between a URL with '#' and empty hash, and the same URL without '#' and hash? It seems changed loader behavior.

[Brady Eidson]

Working on this right now - seems that a tweak inside KURL will be the solution.

[Brady Eidson]

Fixed in http://trac.webkit.org/changeset/35040