PlaidWeb / PlaidWeb/Authl

Obscure the data-* attributes on the Flask login form

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UX
Dominant language
Python
Stars
40
Forks
4
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

Some crawlers see the data-example attributes and interpret them as links to crawl, which then results in stupid things like

access.log.1:47.147.230.141 - - [21/Jun/2026:18:03:43 -0700] "GET /_login/food/coffee/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/instance/?fill=https%3 HTTP/1.1" 200 5193 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/115.0" "beesbuzz.biz" https

Apparently a lot of crawlers now see data- attributes with / as potential URLs to traverse, so a potential workaround would be to replace all /s with another character and then substitute them back in setUrl().

This can all happen within the login.html template itself, with no need to make any backend changes.

Contributor guide

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the login.html template and inspect the data-* attributes and setUrl() handling described in the issue. Confirm that the attributes no longer expose slash-based URLs to crawlers while setUrl() still reconstructs the intended URLs; keep the change within the template without backend modifications.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
flask, python
Domain
authentication
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
72/100

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