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Wednesday, August 18, 2010

legal names cause application errors

I was reading about long names to find examples that I could use in testing. I read this article about Ulrika Örtegren-Kärjenmäki who was banned from a flight because her name did not fit on the Ryanair boarding pass.

So I tried her name in a web application and saw JavaScript errors. The errors didn't happen until I tried  viewing the name from other pages. Names may appear to save properly but you can't be sure until you actually try using them in all areas of the software.

Then I tried a different name with non-ASCII characters - Mötley Crüe, but did not see the same errors. So I  tried changing it to Motley üCrue. Guess what? The same JavaScript errors were back.

The application error happens when the first character of the last name contains an umlaut.

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