[tor-bugs] #1842 [Polipo]: Allow custom handling of DNS failures

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#1842: Allow custom handling of DNS failures
-------------------------+--------------------------------------------------
 Reporter:  zkw          |        Type:  enhancement
   Status:  new          |    Priority:  normal     
Milestone:               |   Component:  Polipo     
  Version:  Polipo: 1.0  |    Keywords:             
   Parent:               |  
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 I like to be able to type search keywords straight into the location bar.
 Without a proxy, Firefox's "keyword.URL" feature[1] lets me do this.  If
 there's just a single word and it's potentially a hostname, Firefox will
 first try to treat it as one, almost always getting a DNS failure before
 submitting it using keyword.URL.  When there's a proxy configured it
 doesn't make sense for Firefox to attempt to detect DNS "host not found"
 errors -- it might have no access -- so it just hands a request for
 http://foobar/ to the proxy and returns what the proxy does.

 Unlike Privoxy, Polipo doesn't provide a way to customise handling of DNS
 errors[2,3].  Such a feature has been discussed for Polipo[4] but never
 implemented as far as I can tell.  I'm attaching a patch with an extremely
 simple workaround that does what I want, in a very similar way to
 Privoxy's: include some JavaScript in the response page so that the user
 can do whatever they like with the error, including redirection to FWSE[5]
 if they so choose.  As Polipo has no templating system and hard-coding a
 keyword URL is unpalatable, the JavaScript is transcluded from Polipo's
 own webserver.  I've also attached the JavaScript I use in case it's
 useful to someone.

 I'd like you to consider including this patch.

 Thanks,

 zkw

 [1] http://kb.mozillazine.org/Keyword.URL

 [2] http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/templates.html

 [3] http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2005070411304373

 [4] http://www.mail-archive.com/polipo-
 users at lists.sourceforge.net/msg00469.html

 [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FWSE

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/1842>
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