http.cookies: parser accepts key characters that Morsel.set then rejects
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Description
Bug report
Bug description:
SimpleCookie.load() extracts cookie names using _LegalKeyChars, which deliberately admits characters RFC 6265 forbids in a token — the comment above it cites MSIE non-compliance as the reason. Morsel.set() then validates with _is_legal_key, built from _LegalChars, which excludes them. Twelve separator characters differ, so any Set-Cookie whose name contains one raises CookieError even though the module's own parser accepted it.
Encountered in the wild: F5 BIG-IP load balancers emit a persistence cookie named for the partition path, /Common/.app/--pool. Browsers accept this...
from http.cookies import SimpleCookie
SimpleCookie('/a/b=1') # also a@b=1, a,b=1, a(b)=1
CPython versions tested on:
3.14
Operating systems tested on:
Linux
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First steps
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Research direction
The issue names SimpleCookie.load(), Morsel.set(), _LegalKeyChars, _is_legal_key, and _LegalChars; start by tracing those parser and validation paths and reproducing the listed cookie names. Done means the accepted-name behavior is consistent and the examples no longer raise CookieError, with regression coverage for the mismatch.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- python
- Domain
- networking
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 3/5
- Estimated time
- 1-2 days
- Activity status
- Active
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 68/100