Nebulus Bug Fixes | Update #009

Repository

https://github.com/jrswab/nebulus

Bug Fixes

The following issues where brought to my attention during the last review. Since the past week was spent away with family no new features were able to be added.

Issue 1: Hardcoding SteemConnect Link

This was set by me in the html markup. While this may not cause an issue (or at least work) it is better to use the fix. This way the URL encoded characters are used correctly. This will also save time in the future if there needs to be a URL change for SteemConnect.

Fix 1: Now using PHP's "http_build_query"

PHP's http_build_query takes an array of data and uses that to construct the link with the proper encoded characters. Our array looks as follows:

$info = array('to' => 'nebulus', 'from' => $steemName, 
    'amount' => '1.000 STEEM', 'memo' => 'pin '.$pinHash, 
    'redirect_uri' => 'https://'.$domain.'/welcome.php');

Then we assign the HTTP build method to a variable or easy use in the URL:
$sc2Link = http_build_query($info);
The build method uses both the assigner and the assignee in the link building. So 'to' => 'nebulus' becomes to=nebulus in the URL with any needed encoding. A good example of this is the 'memo' => pin '.$pinHash. In this example, the space between the word pin and the hash variable is encoded with a + symbol.

So, instead of hard-coding:

https://steemconnect.com/sign/transfer?to=nebulus&amount=1.000+STEEM&from='.$steemName.'&memo=pin+'.$pinHash.'&redirect_uri=https://'.$domain.'/welcome.php

we now use:
https://steemconnect.com/sign/transfer?'.$sc2Link.'
This markup is much less likely to get screwed when changing parameters or updating the link as a whole.

Issue 2: Hardcoding roundRobin in the global scope

I am glad @justyy noticed my error here because having this integer defined in the global scope could have messed up another function in the future or a present one in some odd case. When this variable is in the global scope, it could have reset itself. While this was not happening in testing, it does not mean it would never happen.

Fix 2: Moved the variable inside a function

All that we needed to do was to move tho variable out of the global scope and into a function. Now within the robin function we define roundRobin instead of calling the global variable.

def robin(bLimit):
    roundRobin = 0
...

However, we do need that variable in other functions but since the robin function returns roundRobin we can call the robin function in place of the roundRobin global variable.

So instead of executing two functions at the bottom of the Python code we now only call one (sort of):

robin(blockNum)
pin(roundRobin, blockNum)

Becomes:
pin(robin(bLimit), bLimit)

robin() is still called but as an argument of pin() and Python runs robin() to get the return value and use that as the roundRobin variable within pin().

I am still thinking of a suitable way to define bLimit and remove it from the global scope. If you have any ideas, please let me know on Discord or steem.chat.

Issue 3: No testing for the pinAdd and pidKill functions

Another great spot by Justyy, the two functions pinAdd and pidKill had no checks to make sure the PID or hash was present upon running the code. The lack of testing created risks in the code that could have forced the execution to quit and no subsequent hashes to get pinned.

Fix 4: Check if PID exists.

To fix this, I added some true and false returns to the two functions so that we can check them within the pin() function's execution.

pinAdd():

if pgreped is None:
            return None
        else:
            return pgreped

pidKill():

if pgreped is None:
        print("Nothing to kill")

I chose to add a print statement in pidKill for logging purposes.

GitHub Account

https://github.com/jrswab

All images came from royalty and attribution free sources unless specified.

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