As a SO/CE, I want to know about potential path conflicts with F5 routing

[kreynen]

Context

Because of the number of legacy patch still in the F5, we are often getting reports about errors when trying to create homepage content.

Not sure if this is something that we need in all Express sites or only in the express_homepage bundle. Check with @jwfuller

Process

1. Login to homepage as a SO, CE, ADMIN or DEV
2. Click Express > Content
3. Add Content > Basic Page
4. Under the URL path settings, uncheck Generate automatic URL alias
5. Set the path to "test" or "123test"
6. Click save

Expected result

You would see your node

Current result

Depending on the current legacy configuration you will see a white screen, legacy 404, of varnish 404

Possible Fix

Add validation hook that checks Atlas for potential F5 routing conflicts.

[proofoftom]

@kreynen Does this only apply to prod? I installed a site on dev and created a TEST node which didn't seem to recreate the issue: http://www-dev.colorado.edu/p1aed93ac240/test

[jwfuller]

It applies to all environments, the list of conflicts varies by env

[jwfuller]

Atlas query is where={"pool":"WWWLegacy"}

[proofoftom]

Something to be noted here: I've attempted to use hook_node_validate() to prevent a user from creating a node that conflicts with F5 routing but there's no way to get the pathauto generated path at that point. We may at best be able to emulate the behavior by copying and altering the pathauto_create_alias() function but that seems somewhat hacky. As an alternative, we can, however, check the path at hook_node_insert() and then set a warning message that the freshly created node path is a conflict.

One last thought is, using a hook_update_N(), we could populate the table of paths that are checked against for unique URLs (menu_router?) with the legacy paths so when a new node is created it'll either auto-create a unique URL or throw a message if manually attempting to enter the path.

[proofoftom]

Moved this issue to the express_homepage repo since that's where the code is. See CuBoulder/custom_homepage_bundle#137

[alexfinnarn]

Could maybe test with a text file containing JSON of paths.

[kreynen]

Related #1886

[kreynen]

The f5 is being deprecated so this is no longer relevant.