[Python-Dev] Should urlencode() sort the query parameters (if they come from a dict)? (original) (raw)

Christian Heimes lists at cheimes.de
Sat Aug 18 15:28:03 CEST 2012

Am 17.08.2012 21:27, schrieb Guido van Rossum:

I wonder if it wouldn't make sense to change urlencode() to generate URLs that don't depend on the hash order, for all versions of Python that support PYTHONHASHSEED? It seems a one-line fix:

query = query.items() with this: query = sorted(query.items()) This would not prevent breakage of unit tests, but it would make a much simpler fix possible: simply sort the parameters in the URL.

I vote -0. The issue can also be addressed with a small and simple helper function that wraps urlparse and compares the query parameter. Or you cann urlencode() with sorted(qs.items) instead of qs in the application.

The order of query string parameter is actually important for some applications, for example Zope, colander+deform and other form frameworks use the parameter order to group parameters.

Therefore I propose that the query string is only sorted when the query is exactly a dict and not some subclass or class that has an items() method.

if type(query) is dict:
    query = sorted(query.items())
else:
    query = query.items()

Christian

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