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Niels Lohmann 8c38e270b5 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>

2026-09-09 09:49:12 +02:00

3.7 KiB

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nlohmann::basic_json::patch

basic_json patch(const basic_json& json_patch) const;

JSON Patch defines a JSON document structure for expressing a sequence of operations to apply to a JSON document. With this function, a JSON Patch is applied to the current JSON value by executing all operations from the patch.

Parameters

json_patch (in): JSON patch document

Return value

patched document

Exception safety

Strong guarantee: if an exception is thrown, there are no changes in the JSON value.

Exceptions

Throws parse_error.104 if the JSON patch does not consist of an array of objects.
Throws parse_error.105 if the JSON patch is malformed (e.g., mandatory attributes are missing); example: "operation add must have member path".
Throws out_of_range.401 if an array index is out of range.
Throws out_of_range.403 if a JSON pointer inside the patch could not be resolved successfully in the current JSON value; example: "key baz not found".
Throws out_of_range.405 if JSON pointer has no parent ("add", "remove", "move")
Throws out_of_range.411 if an "add" operation's target location has a parent that is neither an object nor an array.
Throws out_of_range.413 if a "remove" operation's target location has a parent that is neither an object nor an array.
Throws out_of_range.414 if a "move" operation's "from" location is a proper prefix of its "path" location.
Throws other_error.501 if "test" operation was unsuccessful.

Complexity

Linear in the size of the JSON value and the length of the JSON patch. As usually the patch affects only a fraction of the JSON value, the complexity can usually be neglected.

Notes

The application of a patch is atomic: Either all operations succeed and the patched document is returned or an exception is thrown. In any case, the original value is not changed: the patch is applied to a copy of the value.

Examples

??? example

The following code shows how a JSON patch is applied to a value.
 
```cpp
--8<-- "examples/patch.cpp"
```

Output:

```json
--8<-- "examples/patch.output"
```

Version history

Added in version 2.0.0.
Added out_of_range.411 and stopped relying on an internal assertion when an "add" operation's target location has a non-object/non-array parent in version 3.13.0.
Added out_of_range.413 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 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.

3.7 KiB Raw Blame History