[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #12839: Should sandbox themes on activate to prevent fatal errors

[WordPress Trac]

#12839: Should sandbox themes on activate to prevent fatal errors
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 Reporter:  dd32         |       Owner:
     Type:  enhancement  |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal       |   Milestone:  Future Release
Component:  Themes       |     Version:  3.0
 Severity:  normal       |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  needs-patch  |     Focuses:
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Comment (by nikolov.tmw):

 Replying to [comment:7 dd32]:
 > We don't need to worry about any theme settings really, that's all
 either handled up the stack, or something we don't need to worry about.

 I thought that's the case, but wanted to double-check.

 > The way the plugins sandbox works is as follows:
 >  - You hit the Activation URL
 >  - A redirect is issued to a failed-activation step
 >  - The plugin is included, activation functions are run
 >  - The plugin is marked as activated in the database
 >  - A redirect is issued to the successful-activation step, overriding
 the previous failure step.
 >
 > That works pretty well, and could also be done for themes.

 However, I anticipate that a single request won't be a viable option for
 themes. The problem I see is that while multiple plugins can be active, we
 can't(shouldn't) have multiple themes active in the same request. Hence
 why we first do a request to the sandboxing URL and if that succeeds, we
 do a request to the activation URL, where all of the flips and switches
 are currently being taken care of.

 > One option that has been brought up for the upgraders at least, is to
 perform a HTTP callback to various locations (Front page, Admin page, REST
 API) to ensure that none of those pages are fataling and are still
 accessible. That has other downsides though (failing requests, Load-
 balanced/proxied sites, etc) not being handled well.

 I did think about HTTP callbacks as well, but there are definitely cases
 where those would fail(besides the points you brought, it can also fail if
 you're working on a remote server that doesn't have a DNS record, ie using
 your hosts file).

 Ok, I'll work on a patch in the following week or so. It definitely won't
 be able to handle either the REST API, or the CLI, but it will work from
 the UI. Once we have that in place, we can think of possible ways to make
 the activation work for the API and CLI.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/12839#comment:8>
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