We were converting markdown to HTML every time we saved a record, which
has the same problems as sanitizing HTML before saving it to the
database, particularly because the body of a legislation draft is stored
in a translations table.
Performance-wise this isn't a problem: converting a text with more than
200_000 characters takes about a milisecond on my machine.
Note we need to modify a migration generated by globalize, since the
method `create_translation_table!` would fail now that we don't define
`translates :body_html` in the model.
Sanitizing descriptions before saving a record has a few drawbacks:
1. It makes the application rely on data being safe in the database. If
somehow dangerous data enters the database, the application will be
vulnerable to XSS attacks
2. It makes the code complicated
3. It isn't backwards compatible; if we decide to disallow a certain
HTML tag in the future, we'd need to sanitize existing data.
On the other hand, sanitizing the data in the view means we don't need
to triple-check dangerous HTML has already been stripped when we see the
method `auto_link_already_sanitized_html`, since now every time we use
it we sanitize the text in the same line we call this method.
We could also sanitize the data twice, both when saving to the database
and when displaying values in the view. However, doing so wouldn't make
the application safer, since we sanitize text introduced through
textarea fields but we don't sanitize text introduced through input
fields.
Finally, we could also overwrite the `description` method so it
sanitizes the text. But we're already introducing Globalize which
overwrites that method, and overwriting it again is a bit too confusing
in my humble opinion. It can also lead to hard-to-debug behaviour.
In general, we always use relative URLs (using `_path`), but sometimes
we were accidentally using absolute URLs (using `_url`). It's been
reported i might cause some isuses if accepting both HTTP and HTTPS
connections, although we've never seen the case.
In any case, this change makes the code more consistent and makes the
generated HTML cleaner.
Sometimes we're interpolating a link inside a translation, and marking
the whole translations as HTML safe.
However, some translations added by admins to the database or through
crowdin are not entirely under our control.
Although AFAIK crowdin checks for potential cross-site scripting
attacks, it's a good practice to sanitize parts of a string potentially
out of our control before marking the string as HTML safe.
The name `safe_html_with_links` was confusing and could make you think
it takes care of making the HTML safe. So I've renamed it in a way that
makes it a bit more intuitive that it expects its input to be already
sanitized.
I've changed `text_with_links` as well so now the two method names
complement each other.
There's a case where we would face a Cross-Site Scripting attack. An
attacker could use the browser's developer tools to add (on their
browser) a `<code>` tag with a `<script>` tag inside in the text of the
draft version. After doing so, commenting on that text would result in
the attacker's JavaScript being executed.
This way we can simplify the way we generate form fields. In some cases,
we also use the human attribute in table headers, which IMHO makes
sense.
I haven't moved all of them: for example, sometimes a label is
different depending on whether it's shown to administrators, valuators,
or users. And I haven't touched the ones related to devise, since I
wasn't sure about possible side effects.
Note I've also removed placeholders when they had the same text as their
labels, since they weren't helpful. On the contrary, the added redundant
text to the form, potentially distracting users.
I'm not sure why it isn't already done by foundation's form builder. It
doesn't make any sense to change an ID of a form field without changing
the `for` attribute of its label.
Using the block syntax to generate the label with a <span> tag inside
isn't necessary after upgrading foundation_rails_helpers. Before the
upgrade, we couldn't do so because the <span> tag was escaped.
Moderate legislation proposals
- added a controller for moderation/legislation
- updated view to appropriate link + added route
- added a spec
- Feature test
- test for faded
- javascripts for visual effects
