Question thread #4

[pauamma]

It's time for another question thread!

The rules:

- You may ask any dev-related question you have in a comment. (It doesn't even need to be about Dreamwidth, although if it involves a language/library/framework/database Dreamwidth doesn't use, you will probably get answers pointing that out and suggesting a better place to ask.)
- You may also answer any question, using the guidelines given in To Answer, Or Not To Answer.

Comments

[syntheid]

Not sure if this is the sort of question that is supposed to go here, so apologies if it's not. But I keep wondering if there's a reason inline css styling isn't allowed on the profile page. Seems a bit odd, since I've seen that suggested recently as the primary way to restyle a table if you post it in your entry, but then it gets stripped out if you try to put a style attribute in a tag on the profile page. Which means things like removing padding from the table in your profile are impossible to manage, too. Is there a security/site reason for that?

[denise]

It's for security: CSS is a major vector of injection attack, and profiles can be served from the www subdomain in certain cases, opening up the possibility of malicious CSS having access to a user's master cookie if it manages to make it through. Journal space is on the user subdomain, which limits the damage that any security breach could affect to just being able to leave comments in that subdomain as the person who's had their cookies stolen, but if a malicious someone can get the master cookie, they'd have access to the whole account.

[syntheid]

Ahh, that makes sense, thank you.

[shadowspar]

When fixing a bug, if we want to include an explanatory snippet for the person who does the code tour to make use of, should we just chuck it directly into bugzilla as a comment on the bug?

[denise]

yup!

MySQL learnings

[wychwood]

If I want to learn some MySQL - specifically, I want to be able to query information from a pre-existing database, rather than doing anything active to a database - where is the best place to look? This is for work (though I'm hoping it might be transferrable to DW!), and they can't provide me any training but are happy to buy me a book or two. What are the best ones to buy? Is there a great free online training site I should know about? Etc.

Re: MySQL learnings

[pne]

For basic querying, you might be fine with just a generic book on SQL, which will stand you in good stead if you need to talk to other databases, too.

Re: MySQL learnings

[wychwood]

Do you have any good suggestions for a suitable generic book?

Re: MySQL learnings

[pne]

I'm afraid not, no. I learned SQL ages ago, mostly on the job and picking it up a bit at a time, rather from a book.

Re: MySQL learnings

[cesy]

It's been a while since I started from scratch, but a quick Google should cover the basic commands like SELECT and WHERE.