On the black/whitelist page one can add an domain and select the type "wildcard black/whitelist". I think this term is misleading and can be misinterpreted resulting in faulty regex. The term "wildcard" suggests one can enter common wildcard symbols like * or ?
At least two people (see here and here) have used * in conjunction with a domain which caused pihole -q and phole -d to fail (here and here) because of the automatically generated (faulty) regex.
Although it is acknowledged that there should be some kind of regex syntax checker the issue arose from misinterpreting the term "wildcard" - and should be omitted.
It is/was the same in v4.x. I just brought it up here because black/whitelist page have been modified with the implementation of the group management pages and this would be an easy and fast fix.
I think we disagree on this. For me these are two issues where one leads to the other. Implementing a regex check is needed but that is not enough. I still think the term "wildcard" is easily misinterpreted and should be renamed.
Yeah, regex can be intimidating to even those that have done it before. Some people might even be totally put off by the idea of having to wrap their heads around learning regex in order to wildcard block/whitelist something.
Hell, I've done regex before and I even find it intimidating.
The blacklist page is labeled "domain", with the text "domain to be added". Domains don't contain wildcard characters.
Perhaps we could clarify the wording here - if you enter a domain name, you select either exact blacklist or wildcard blacklist as the type; if you enter a regex, you select the regex type.
I think it is not the wording "Domain to be added" that will prevent wrong inputs. As the same input field is used for domains and regex, users might be used to enter special (regex) characters in this field. If you want to prevent that I see two options: rename 'wildcard' or reduce the amount of available type options depending on the user's input (no special characters - only exact and wildcard visible, containing a regex character - only regex available)
How about splitting the entry options into two separate boxes?
Top for a domain name, and the choice there is either to exact blacklist or wildcard blacklist. Basically what we have now, without the regex option. Users enter a domain name here.
Below that, a separate entry line labeled “regular expression” that has only one choice, regex. Users enter a regex here.
No checking, let the user make the correct choice.
Have been thinking about this too - but came to the conclusion that this would complicate and destroy the nice interface.
Side note: wildcard type is missing in the group managment/domains page - I see some inconsistency here. By design or accident?
Users won't make correct choices. They will make mistakes (because they don't know better) leading to 'malfunctioning' and lot of help requests in the forum. You could prevent the effort for all with some kind of check (if you want to educate - pop up a note why the input was wrong).
You want it to be clearer, but you also want to keep the same interface? That seems contradictory.
This is a relatively simple change that doesn't require additional code for checking, parsing, warning, etc. You enter domain names in one area, regex in another. Domain names don't include wildcard characters.
Note that we don't check the user regex for correctness - if they enter something that doesn't work, it won't work.
Yes. That's why I initially suggested to just rename the 'Wildcard black/whitelist' to something like 'Subdomain black/whitelist' to make it less tempting to enter *. At least to me it wasn't clear that I should not enter the wildcard symbol * despite it is called 'wildcard blacklist'.
