Open Stack

Hi Chris,

Thanks for bring it up here,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris St. Pierre [mailto:stpierre at metacloud.com]
> Sent: Saturday, September 13, 2014 2:53 AM
> To: openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org
> Subject: [openstack-dev] [nova] Expand resource name allowed characters
> 
> We have proposed that the allowed characters for all resource names in Nova (flavors, aggregates, etc.) be expanded to
> all printable unicode characters and horizontal spaces: https://review.openstack.org/#/c/119741
> 
> Currently, the only allowed characters in most resource names are alphanumeric, space, and [.-_].
> 
> 
> We have proposed this change for two principal reasons:
> 
> 1. We have customers who have migrated data forward since Essex, when no restrictions were in place, and thus have characters
> in resource names that are disallowed in the current version of OpenStack. This is only likely to be useful to people
> migrating from Essex or earlier, since the current restrictions were added in Folsom.
> 
> 2. It's pretty much always a bad idea to add unnecessary restrictions without a good reason. While we don't have an immediate
> need to use, for example, the ever-useful http://codepoints.net/U+1F4A9 in a flavor name, it's hard to come up with a
> reason people *shouldn't* be allowed to use it.
> 
> That said, apparently people have had a need to not be allowed to use some characters, but it's not clear why:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/nova/+bug/977187
> So I guess if anyone knows any reason why these printable characters should not be joined in holy resource naming, speak
> now or forever hold your peace.

I also could not find the reason of current restriction on the bug report,
and I'd like to know it as the history.
On v2 API(not v2.1), each resource name contains the following restriction
for its name:

  Resource  | Length  | Pattern
 -----------+---------+----------------------------------
  aggregate | 1-255   | nothing
  backup    | nothing | nothing
  flavor    | 1-255   | '^[a-zA-Z0-9. _-]*[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+
            |         |   [a-zA-Z0-9. _-]*$'
  keypair   | 1-255   | '^[a-zA-Z0-9 _-]+$'
  server    | 1-255   | nothing
  cell      | 1-255   | don't contain "." and "!"

On v2.1 API, we have applied the same restriction rule[1] for whole resource
names for API consistency, so maybe we need to consider this topic for whole
names.

[1]: https://github.com/openstack/nova/blob/master/nova/api/validation/parameter_types.py#L44

Thanks
Ken'ichi Ohmichi