Bulk edit comments: Request-URI Too Large

[hakre]

edit-comments.php allows to set the number of comments to edit at once. Setting those to a value to 500 to keep up with high-traffic sites, a full selected submit will result in a "Request-URI Too Large" message (on certain servers) which is a sign that wordpress violates the RFC of the URI especially the maximum length by RFC definition.

The solution is to submit the form via POST not GET.

[scribu]

I'm pretty sure this was brought up before, but can't seem to find the ticket.

Yes, POST should be used for all bulk editing, not just for comments.

[hakre]

Yeah, looks like that procol limitation have not been taken into account while the last over-work of the backend was done. This is one realting to bulk editing posts: #10762

The tickets should be kept seperate because it looks like that a correct implementation might be contextually faster possible in certain domains of the backend then in other. That is because there is a lot of code for each section/domain (comments, posts etc.). Same bug only in terms of the concrete design flaw, not the same bug if you take the concrete code into consideration. Code duplication relates to bug duplication.

[scribu]

The fix is trivial, since WP uses $_REQUEST everywhere: just replace method="get" with method="post".

[scribu]

Search should still use GET method

[janeforshort]

Will the current filter settings be preserved when searching?

[scribu]

Sadly, no.

[dd32]

On the comments page, it makes sense to keep the filters for a search.

Since theres no patch here, I'm moving it to Future Release pending a patch.

I'm also inclined to merge #10762 into this ticket, Whilst they may be different functionalities, they're underpinned by the same defect, that is, selecing a bulk set can trigger the bug.

[hakre]

This seems to be an overall design issue in back-end. Same is for bulk editing media files. All points where bulk editing is an options should be checked and properly processed for proper HTTP compatibility. Related: #13443.

[hakre]

Related: #9259

[jane]

Same error when screen options set to 200, 100 and 50.

[scribu]

I think I'll take this one, as part of my GSoC project.

[azaozz]

Replying to scribu:
The solution should be relatively simple:

• POST should be used to submit the request
• all display filters (All, Pending, Approved, etc.) could be inserted as hidden fields to preserve them
• the same solution should be applied to all screens that list items: posts, comments, attachments, etc.

[scribu]

See #14579.

[scribu]

[15491]

[nacin]

#16335. We'll need to fix this in conjunction with ajax redux.

[scribu]

Closing as dup of #10762.