Handle special characters in database URL

If the password contains special characters such as ? or /, the following exception is raised (here I tried to use “foo?bar” as a password):

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./manage.py", line 19, in <module>
    execute_from_command_line(sys.argv)
  File "/var/www/myproject/dev/env/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 399, in execute_from_command_line
    utility.execute()
  File "/var/www/myproject/dev/env/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 376, in execute
    sys.stdout.write(self.main_help_text() + '\n')
  File "/var/www/myproject/dev/env/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 240, in main_help_text
    for name, app in six.iteritems(get_commands()):
  File "/var/www/myproject/dev/env/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 107, in get_commands
    apps = settings.INSTALLED_APPS
  File "/var/www/myproject/dev/env/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 54, in __getattr__
    self._setup(name)
  File "/var/www/myproject/dev/env/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 49, in _setup
    self._wrapped = Settings(settings_module)
  File "/var/www/myproject/dev/env/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 128, in __init__
    mod = importlib.import_module(self.SETTINGS_MODULE)
  File "/var/www/myproject/dev/env/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/utils/importlib.py", line 40, in import_module
    __import__(name)
  File "/var/www/myproject/dev/myproject/myproject/settings/base.py", line 175, in <module>
    'default': dj_database_url.parse(get_env_variable('DATABASE_URL'))
  File "/var/www/myproject/dev/env/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/dj_database_url.py", line 84, in parse
    'PORT': url.port or '',
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/urlparse.py", line 110, in port
    port = int(port, 10)
ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: 'foo'

I tried to escape the special characters with backslashes but then it got interpreted as "foo". I also tried to url-encode them, ie. replacing “?” by %63 but then the password returned by dj-database-url was “foo%63bar”.

The issue can be easily reproduced with the following URL: postgres://foo:foo?bar@localhost/foobar.

Maybe I’m just missing something but if that’s the case I think it would be worth documenting it somewhere.

[iMerica]

Steps to Reproduce

1. Export the following as an env var export DB_URL=postgresql://foo:123XYZ##[e-mail]:5432/test_db
2. Use Django db URL and parse the URL above: dj_database_url.parse(os.environ.get('DB_URL'))

Expected Results dj-database-url should either parse this properly or warn me with a helpful error if theres an issue

Actual results dj-database-url raises the error ValueError: invalid literal for int() ... because dj-database-url interprets the # as a scheme delimiter or something.

I should be able to work around this by encoding before parsing. Just leaving some details here in case it helps 😃 .

[kkaczmarczyk]

Yeah I’ve got the same. I think this issue should be reopened.

FWIW: You can use quote from urlib to properly parse DB connection string. I used dj_database_url.parse(urllib.quote(os.environ.get('DATABASE_URL'), ':/@'))

instead of dj_database_url.config()

and it works for my case