URL query parameters and how laxness creates de facto requirements on the web

Accepting random stuff like this is in the spirit of the protocols of the internet.

Postel’s Law: > Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others (often reworded as "Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept").

Also known as the robustness principle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle

The article doesn’t seem to identify a problem caused by these unexpected parameters. I would think any system that accepts input like this would need to validate the input and reject or ignore invalid input. Where is the problem?

I have been known to add a parameter like &x=1 to a page that fails to load properly the first time. It can invalidate an incorrect cache and let the page reload.

It’s not laziness. It’s the stupid flexibility of certain protocols, APIs, languages

Make things as strict as possible