Re: to_tsquery, plainto_... avoiding bad input, injections. Is there a builtin function for this ? Escaping?

I'm not familiar with Python, but I have used the Perl DBI library for a
long time. The DBI library gives you a database specific quote()
function, and also something much stronger: prepare() and execute().

This works well with most applications, but I'm not sure how it would
tie into fulltext queries.

-Will

________________________________

From: pgsql-general-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org
[mailto:pgsql-general-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org] On Behalf Of Mohamed
Sent: 8 January 2009 11:33
To: pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] to_tsquery, plainto_... avoiding bad input,
injections. Is there a builtin function for this ? Escaping?

Yeah, would Python protect you from that ? I am using Groovy on Grails
and not sure how these things work here. Most of the time I use GORM to
do my queries, but now I am stuck with SQL because of fulltext search
with Postgres. Perhaps there is some similiar things in Groovy to run, I
will check into that.

/ Moe

On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 5:20 PM, Christopher Swingley
<cswingle(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

Greetings!

> Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 8:07 PM, Mohamed <mohamed5432154321(at)gmail(dot)com>

> > Hi, I am wondering whether or not there exists any built in
> > function for making sure a query/textinput is not harmful or one
> > that escapes them. If not, what kind of things should I watch out
> > for ?
>

> * Reg Me Please <regmeplease(at)gmail(dot)com> [2009-Jan-08 00:20 AKST]:

> Maybe I'm missing the point, but have read about quote_ident() and
> quote_literal() at chapter 9.4 "String Functions and Operators"?

quote_literal() does seem like a good choice for getting the quoting
correct. As far as protecting yourself from SQL injection attacks, you
may want to look at the options available in the programming language
you are using to get user input. In Python, for example, you can run
queries as follows:

parameters = (12, "bar", True)
query = "INSERT INTO foo VALUES (%d, %s, %s);"
cursor.execute(query, parameters)
cursor.commit()

Python fills the '%X' fields with the parameters after verifying they
are safe. Probably best to test how much protection this offers.

I believe the risk isn't so much a question of quoting or special
characters, but carefully crafted input variables. For example, what if
the second parameter was:

"'bar', True); DELETE FROM foo; INSERT INTO foo VALUES (1, 'bar',"

Cheers,

Chris
--
Christopher S. Swingley
http://swingleydev.com/
<cswingle(at)gmail(dot)com>

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