Reject JSON Patch move when from is a proper prefix of path (#5497)

* Reject JSON Patch move when from is a proper prefix of path

RFC 6902 (section 4.4) forbids "from" from being a proper prefix of
"path" for a "move" operation: "a location cannot be moved into one
of its children." "move" is implemented as remove-then-add with no
check for this. For object targets, the subsequent "add" happened to
throw as a side effect of resolving through the now-removed parent,
but for array targets, removing the "from" element shifts subsequent
indices, so "path" silently re-resolves to a different element and
the operation "succeeds" with a silently corrupted document.

Add a check, before performing the remove/add, for whether "from" is
a proper prefix of "path" at the reference-token level. This compares
json_pointer's already-unescaped reference_tokens vectors (basic_json
is a friend of json_pointer) rather than the raw pointer strings, so
that tokens containing escaped '/' or '~' characters are compared
correctly, and a token that merely looks like a string prefix (e.g.
"/ab" vs "/abc/x") is not mistaken for a pointer-token prefix. When
"from" is a proper prefix of "path", throw out_of_range.414.

Fixes #5397.

Stacked on top of the fix for #5396 (branch
issue-5396-patch-remove-primitive-parent), since both touch the same
patch_inplace move/remove handling in include/nlohmann/json.hpp.

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Add root-pointer and array-append-token edge case tests for the move prefix check

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Replace std::equal with an explicitly-bounded loop in the move prefix check

The three-iterator std::equal(first1, last1, first2) form has no
explicit end iterator for the second range, which a static analyzer
(Flawfinder, CWE-126) flags as a potential over-read even though the
preceding size comparison already guarantees the second range is long
enough. Rather than argue the point, make the bound visible in the code
itself via an explicit loop -- every access to ptr.reference_tokens is
now guarded by the same index the loop condition bounds against
from_size.

(The C++14 four-iterator std::equal(first1, last1, first2, last2) form
was tried first as a more minimal fix, but this codebase targets C++11
and that overload is not safely usable under -std=c++11 with all
supported standard library implementations.)

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Extract the move prefix check into a named helper lambda

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Account for JSON_DIAGNOSTIC_POSITIONS in the move-prefix-check error messages

out_of_range::create() includes a "(bytes X-Y)" position annotation when
JSON_DIAGNOSTIC_POSITIONS is enabled, which the ci_test_diagnostic_positions
CI job builds the whole suite with. The five new out_of_range.414
assertions only checked the annotation-free message. Confirmed
JSON_DIAGNOSTICS produces the same (annotation-free) message as the
default build for this particular throw site (its path-based annotation
is empty at the root, where &result always points here), so only two
message variants are needed, not three.

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

---------

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>
This commit is contained in:
Niels Lohmann
2026-09-09 09:49:12 +02:00
committed by GitHub
parent c9477ccf91
commit 8c38e270b5
6 changed files with 211 additions and 0 deletions
+4
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@@ -36,6 +36,8 @@ Strong guarantee: if an exception is thrown, there are no changes in the JSON va
location has a parent that is neither an object nor an array.
- Throws [`out_of_range.413`](../../home/exceptions.md#jsonexceptionout_of_range413) if a "remove" operation's target
location has a parent that is neither an object nor an array.
- Throws [`out_of_range.414`](../../home/exceptions.md#jsonexceptionout_of_range414) if a "move" operation's "from"
location is a proper prefix of its "path" location.
- Throws [`other_error.501`](../../home/exceptions.md#jsonexceptionother_error501) if "test" operation was
unsuccessful.
@@ -79,3 +81,5 @@ is thrown. In any case, the original value is not changed: the patch is applied
target location has a non-object/non-array parent in version 3.13.0.
- Added [`out_of_range.413`](../../home/exceptions.md#jsonexceptionout_of_range413) and stopped silently ignoring a "remove" operation whose target
location has a non-object/non-array parent in version 3.13.0.
- Added [`out_of_range.414`](../../home/exceptions.md#jsonexceptionout_of_range414) and rejected a "move" operation whose "from" location is a proper
prefix of its "path" location instead of silently producing a corrupted result in version 3.13.0.
@@ -32,6 +32,8 @@ No guarantees, value may be corrupted by an unsuccessful patch operation.
location has a parent that is neither an object nor an array.
- Throws [`out_of_range.413`](../../home/exceptions.md#jsonexceptionout_of_range413) if a "remove" operation's target
location has a parent that is neither an object nor an array.
- Throws [`out_of_range.414`](../../home/exceptions.md#jsonexceptionout_of_range414) if a "move" operation's "from"
location is a proper prefix of its "path" location.
- Throws [`other_error.501`](../../home/exceptions.md#jsonexceptionother_error501) if "test" operation was
unsuccessful.
@@ -76,3 +78,5 @@ function throws an exception.
target location has a non-object/non-array parent in version 3.13.0.
- Added [`out_of_range.413`](../../home/exceptions.md#jsonexceptionout_of_range413) and stopped silently ignoring a "remove" operation whose target
location has a non-object/non-array parent in version 3.13.0.
- Added [`out_of_range.414`](../../home/exceptions.md#jsonexceptionout_of_range414) and rejected a "move" operation whose "from" location is a proper
prefix of its "path" location instead of silently producing a corrupted result in version 3.13.0.
+14
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@@ -947,6 +947,20 @@ A JSON Patch `remove` operation cannot be applied because the target location's
This exception was added in version 3.13.0. Before that, this situation was silently ignored (the `remove` operation had no effect).
### json.exception.out_of_range.414
A JSON Patch `move` operation's `"from"` location is a proper prefix of its `"path"` location. Per [RFC 6902](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6902) (section 4.4), a location cannot be moved into one of its own children.
!!! failure "Example message"
```
cannot move value: 'from' path '/0' is a proper prefix of 'path' '/0/0'
```
!!! note
This exception was added in version 3.13.0. Before that, this situation could succeed with a corrupted result: for an array target, removing the "from" element before the "add" step shifted subsequent indices, so "path" silently re-resolved to a different element than intended.
## Further exceptions
This exception is thrown in case of errors that cannot be classified with the