Error while searching Patient

[akshay-ap]

🐛 Bug Report

Uncaught (in promise) SyntaxError: Invalid regular expression: /Adk\/: \ at end of pattern
    at RegExp (<anonymous>)
    at a.<anonymous> (PatientRepository.ts:21)
    at s (2.726afb2a.chunk.js?__WB_REVISION__=15200f807ae5907c400b:sourcemap:2)
    at Generator._invoke (2.726afb2a.chunk.js?__WB_REVISION__=15200f807ae5907c400b:sourcemap:2)
    at Generator.next (2.726afb2a.chunk.js?__WB_REVISION__=15200f807ae5907c400b:sourcemap:2)
    at r (2.726afb2a.chunk.js?__WB_REVISION__=15200f807ae5907c400b:sourcemap:2)
    at c (2.726afb2a.chunk.js?__WB_REVISION__=15200f807ae5907c400b:sourcemap:2)
    at 2.726afb2a.chunk.js?__WB_REVISION__=15200f807ae5907c400b:sourcemap:2
    at new Promise (<anonymous>)
    at a.<anonymous> (2.726afb2a.chunk.js?__WB_REVISION__=15200f807ae5907c400b:sourcemap:2)

A clear and concise description of what the bug is.

To Reproduce

1. Create a patient
2. Enter text like 'Adk/'(string containing '/') in patient search bar.

Expected behavior

No error.

Your Environment

• node version: 12
• fastify version: >=1.0.0
• os: Windows

[jackcmeyer]

Thanks for the report @akshay-ap. Confirmed that this is an issue. Seems like we should validate the characters in the search field.

[JDarke]

I've got a fix that simply removes any backslashes, to avoid escaping the regexp. Does it need a wider-ranging check for other characters, or maybe just remove anything other than A-Z...?

PatientRepository.ts - Line 16 added, line 22 modified to replace 'text' with 'cleanText':

import shortid from 'shortid'
import Patient from '../../model/Patient'
import Repository from './Repository'
import { patients } from '../../config/pouchdb'

const formatPatientCode = (prefix: string, sequenceNumber: string) => `${prefix}${sequenceNumber}`

const getPatientCode = (): string => formatPatientCode('P-', shortid.generate())

export class PatientRepository extends Repository<Patient> {
  constructor() {
    super(patients)
  }

  async search(text: string): Promise<Patient[]> {
    const cleanText = text.replace(/\\/g, '')                   /* line added */
    return super.search({
      selector: {
        $or: [
          {
            fullName: {
              $regex: RegExp(cleanText, 'i'),                   /* line modified */
            },
          },
          {
            code: text,
          },
        ],
      },
    })
  }

  async save(entity: Patient): Promise<Patient> {
    const patientCode = getPatientCode()
    entity.code = patientCode
    return super.save(entity)
  }
}

export default new PatientRepository()

Either way, happy to take this one on if it's free.

[akshay-ap]

The issue seems to be with string ending with any special characters in regex like [ or String having only * character.
Unhandled Rejection (SyntaxError): Invalid regular expression: /Test[/: Unterminated character class.
Unhandled Rejection (SyntaxError): Invalid regular expression: /*/: Nothing to repeat.
@JDarke, I would sugesst to find all the such cases rather than fixing the issue for just one case.

[JDarke]

Ah, I thought it was just the backslash. I'll write a general case solution to remove anything that's not whitespace or alphabetical if Jack assigns me to the bug.

Is it better to fix as shown, by cleaning the search string, or by stopping the text field from accepting any disallowed characters in the first place?

[jackcmeyer]

@JDarke I've assigned this to you.

[JDarke]

Do international alphabetical characters need to be factored in to this, or is localisation being handled separately?

[jackcmeyer]

international characters should be handled here. numbers, apostrophes, and other characters found in a name should also be supported.

[JDarke]

Will do.

[JDarke]

@akshay-ap ...I've run through numerous special characters, and so far my list of chars that break the search is as follows:

\ - Backslash
[  - Opening square bracket
 *  - Lone asterisk (with no preceding chars) 
** - Consecutive asterisks (with or without preceding chars) 
( ) - opening OR closing parentheses
? - Question mark

Does this cover all the instances you experienced?

[jackcmeyer]

@JDarke I think that we can safely remove all of those characters you listed.

[JDarke]

Ok, those are all removed in my last commit.

I think this should also be addressed at the Add New Patient input stage, too; currently it's possible to create a patient with a name containing those special characters, which the user will now not be able to accurately search for.

Separate issue to be raised, or to be included with this issue?

[JDarke]

I've just had this bug resurface

Can anyone else reproduce the error by entering a search string ending in backslash into the patient list search bar?