Broken with express+connect+nstore-session

[pkrumins]

Here is a terrible bug in nStore. When used together with express, and nstore-session it somehow manages to create a wrong index for the database, which leads to invalid JSON exceptions being thrown.

Here is an example. This database was created by nstore-session:

{"lastAccess":1284315882938}    {"key":"df4e2e9f03e00ae7657823ff2c1a.6c069e863cf2262ec95d8cfe5dac2d47"}
{"lastAccess":1284315883048}    {"key":"df4e2e9f03e00ae7657823ff2c1a.6c069e863cf2262ec95d8cfe5dac2d47"}
    {}
{"lastAccess":1284315889592,"name":"pkrumins"}  {"key":"dccae3e52ec5ef3f584aea9df1bb.6f58e178ddc813ae35b84c665a58ec8b"}

And when used, nStore would throw the following error:

SyntaxError: Unexpected token ILLEGAL
    at Object.parse (native)
    at /usr/local/pkg/nodejs-0.2.0/lib/node/.npm/nStore/0.2.1/package/lib/nstore.js:103:27
    at /usr/local/pkg/nodejs-0.2.0/lib/node/.npm/nStore/0.2.1/package/lib/nstore.js:33:7
    at node.js:764:9

So I debugged it and located that when it requests the last key 'dccae3e52ec5ef3f584aea9df1bb.6f58e178ddc813ae35b84c665a58ec8b', the index it uses to read the record from the db file is messed up:

{ position: 279
, length: 46
, meta: { key: 'dccae3e52ec5ef3f584aea9df1bb.6f58e178ddc813ae35b84c665a58ec8b' }
}

The contents in the db at position 279 is:

4aea9df1bb.6f58e178ddc813ae35b84c665a58ec8b"}

At line 101 nStore tries to call JSON.parse(buffer.toString()); and this buffer.toString() is the data above. So it throws an exception that I listed.

Here is how to reproduce. Clone StackVM at this revision: http://github.com/substack/stackvm/commit/fa702d45234532b7bacc572e08676f4b74627cd0

Next run node ./stackvm/bin/populate.js to populate users database.

Then run node ./stackvm/server.js to start StackVM locally.

Then connect to localhost:9000 and use pkrumins as login and moo as password. That will log you into StackVM.

Now in the console you should see SyntaxError: Unexpected token ILLEGAL. Also if you now press logout, express will catch this exception and display it in the browser. But you'll also see it in the console.

I hope you can locate this bug, I spent a lot of time debugging it but could not determine what caused it. If you just simply took the database I listed there above (and replace 4 spaces between records with tabs), it would work. Doesn't work just in the web environment.

[creationix]

Sorry for being slow, but have you tried the new code since I merged in the rewrite?

[milani]

I have same problem. cloned repository at March 31. It is still buggy.