Gen EDGE

  • 1.  Code page translation problems due to cut and paste into textfields

    Posted May 24, 2016 05:14 AM

    We are getting some problems due to code page translations. This happens when people do cut and paste into text fields. For example we had a case with a happy smiley. We are running handwritten .net clients through proxies to CICS GEN generated servers. Our TIRCRUNC is set up for 1201 to 278 code page translation: If a user do cut and paste of a text containing a smiley into a textfield the smiley is sent to the host like this: (from CMIDEBUG)             F0:    00530053 0A303030 30303030 3030304C |.S.S.0000000000L|             100:  00258648 531F5338 36373032 20323031 |...HS.S86702.201|             110:  362D3035 2D32330D 0A476C61 6420EF81 |6.05.23..Glad.ï.|             120:  8A207261 64530653 38363730 32      |..radS. (the smiley is between the Words "Glad" and "rad". X'EF818A' The happy smiley ends up in the DB2 Database as X’3F’. So code page 1201 Ascii X’EF818A’ is translated into code page 278 EBCDIC X’3F’. When looking at the 278 EBCDIC codepage it seems that X’3F’ is SUB (substitute) which I interpret as a place holder When the data is sent back to the client the place holder X'3F' is translated into X'1A' which is the SUB (substitute) on code page 1201. So this is all correct. We get an error on the client side which we think is due to the XML parser not being able to cope with X'1A'. CA told me that the XML specification says the only hex values less than x’20’ allowed in XML are x’09’, x’0a’, and x’0d’. This would explain why it throws an error when hit by X'1A'. I assume we cannot be the only ones having this problem. How are other customers coping with this? Do you check every text field for unwanted characters? How do you determine which characters are allowed?



  • 2.  Re: Code page translation problems due to cut and paste into textfields

    Posted Aug 03, 2016 04:54 AM

    Hi Britt-Marie.

     

    Your “Discussions” post meanwhile is around for months now and was viewed more than 200 times, but hasn’t been commented so far.

     

    While you explicitly stated, that you are looking for comments from other CA Gen customer,  I would like to ask, if you maybe got any feedback outside of the community and if you’ve been able to implement a way to deal with this matter in a way that is acceptable for you.

     

    You mentioned that CA stated, that the XML specification says the only hex values less than x’20’ allowed in XML are x’09’, x’0A’, and x’0D’. Is there anything else we, CA, could do for you ?

     

    Best regards

    Hillrich



  • 3.  Re: Code page translation problems due to cut and paste into textfields

    Posted Aug 08, 2016 04:58 AM

    Hi

     

    Thanks for your email.

     

    I have not got any feedback on this. I still do not know how other customers cope with this. Do you know of any “best practices” or recommendations for this problem? What does CA recommend we do?

     

    //Britt-Marie

     

    Från: Hillrich_Oncken

    Skickat: den 3 augusti 2016 10:54

    Till: Kronfjäll Britt-Marie

    Ämne: Re:  - Code page translation problems due to cut and paste into textfields

     

    CA Communities <https://communities.ca.com/?et=watches.email.thread>

     

     

    Code page translation problems due to cut and paste into textfields

     

    reply from Hillrich Oncken<https://communities.ca.com/people/Hillrich_Oncken?et=watches.email.thread> in CA Gen EDGE - View the full discussion<https://communities.ca.com/message/241903518?et=watches.email.thread#comment-241903518>



  • 4.  Re: Code page translation problems due to cut and paste into textfields

    Posted Aug 11, 2016 08:27 AM

    Hi Britt-Marie.

     

    It took me a couple of days to find your discussion of this matter with a colleague of mine at CA.

    You probably will still have this email communication from May 2016. Just let me know if not and I’ll resend it to you.

     

    In this communication the colleague essentially stated, that the application needs to validate the user’s input prior to invoking the proxy. And explained that if this is a Gen client, you potentially could use the VERIFY function to make sure only characters supported by code page 278 were allowed as input. For a handwritten client, you’ll most likely need to use javascript code to perform the validation. HTML 5 also has some new validation capabilities.

     

    Since this handling is done outside of CA Gen there isn’t any proposal we provide.  A Google search though for “how to prevent invalid input on web page” results in a lots of suggestions. 

     

    I did get back to you, since you did create a “Question” – not a “Discussion”.

    While this is understandable since you wanted to ask for feedback from the other community member,  we, CA, want to make sure every question is answered and marked as such. Therefore I contacted you and would like to ask for your agreement to mark this question as answered.

     

    If you want to leave an open entry within the CA Gen community, please create a “Discussion” item, that is supposed to stay open.      

     

    Best regards

    Hillrich



  • 5.  Re: Code page translation problems due to cut and paste into textfields

    Posted Aug 11, 2016 09:31 AM

    I do remember Clay’s email and in fact it was him that suggested I ask the community. I consider this a question for the community. Not necessarily a discussion. I did not raise this with support since it’s not really a CA problem, hence the question to the community.

     

    If you rather call it a discussion please go ahead and change it into a discussion.

     

    //Britt-Marie

     

    Från: Hillrich_Oncken

    Skickat: den 11 augusti 2016 14:28

    Till: Kronfjäll Britt-Marie

    Ämne: Re:  - Code page translation problems due to cut and paste into textfields

     

    CA Communities <https://communities.ca.com/?et=watches.email.thread>

     

     

    Code page translation problems due to cut and paste into textfields

     

    reply from Hillrich Oncken<https://communities.ca.com/people/Hillrich_Oncken?et=watches.email.thread> in CA Gen EDGE - View the full discussion<https://communities.ca.com/message/241905629?et=watches.email.thread#comment-241905629>



  • 6.  Re: Code page translation problems due to cut and paste into textfields

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Aug 16, 2016 06:45 PM

    Hi Britt-Marie,

    I found a few web links on this topic confirming the XML Parser will fail for X'1A'=U+001A e.g.

    unicode - Encoding for an XML document containing U+001A - Stack Overflow

    This contained ref confirms your original description abut the substitution of the original illegal character

    Ascii control codes (control characters, C0 controls)

    From my interpretattion it looks your custom client code will need to trap the input of the characters that cause the problem e.g. happy smiley. Then either remove them or convert to something else that will not be substituted due to non-recognition in the EBCDIC codepage, which ultimately causes the XML parsing failure after return to client.

    Hope that helps

     

    Regards,

     

    Lynn



  • 7.  Re: Code page translation problems due to cut and paste into textfields

    Posted Aug 17, 2016 09:58 AM

    Lynn

     

    Thanks for your response.

     

    I guess that is the way we will have to go…. Only problem is that what else, apart from happy smiley, do we need to trap…. It could potentially be a lot of stuff (with all the emojies out there…..). I was wondering what everybody else did but I did not get any responses….

     

    //Britt-Marie

     

    Från: Lynn_Williams

    Skickat: den 17 augusti 2016 00:46

    Till: Kronfjäll Britt-Marie

    Ämne: Re:  - Code page translation problems due to cut and paste into textfields

     

    CA Communities <https://communities.ca.com/?et=watches.email.thread>

     

     

    Code page translation problems due to cut and paste into textfields

     

    reply from Lynn Williams<https://communities.ca.com/people/Lynn_Williams?et=watches.email.thread> in CA Gen EDGE - View the full discussion<https://communities.ca.com/message/241906717?commentID=241906717&et=watches.email.thread#comment-241906717>