Do I need to sanitize the user input Laravel

Question

I am using Laravel 4 with Eloquent. When I get the user input I just use $name=Input::get('name') and then I do $a->name=$name;

I don't know if the function Input::get protect me from SQL Injection and XSS. If it does not, what do I have to do to sanitize the input?

And, when I show the value in my view, shall I use {{$a}} or {{{$a}}}

Greetings and thanks.

Solution 1

Laravel uses PDO's parameter binding, so SQL injection is not something you should worry about. You should read this though.

Input::get() does not filter anything.

Triple curly braces do the same as e() and HTML::entities(). All of them call htmlentities with UTF-8 support:

htmlentities($your_string, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8', false);

Solution 2

You should use {{{$a}}} because for example Input can has HTML tag. Laravel won't filter it.

To avoid SQL injection you should use bind your parameters running queries like:

$var = 1;
$results = DB::select('select * from users where id = ?', array($var));

and not:

$results = DB::select('select * from users where id = '.$var);

Comments

[FooBar]

So I should use htmlentities or something like that? What does Input::get filter?

[Marcin Nabiałek]

@Fylux So far as I know it's interface to getting POST, GET and so on data. It trims data but doesn't filter it, so when displaying you should use triple bracing - this way htmlentities function is run on variable value

[FooBar]

If I use {{{ to show it, should I use also htmlentities when saving the information?

[Marcin Nabiałek]

@Fylux No, using {{{ Laravel will do it for you

[FooBar]

If I use {{{ to show it, should I use also htmlentities when saving the information?

[FooBar]

But is there any problem if I have a corrupted input saved in my db?

[Marcin Nabiałek]

@Fylux what do you mean? Always there might be some problem and running htmlentities or {{{ in theory should solve this problem

[FooBar]

I mean, if would be better to do both things, use htmlentities and {{{

[FooBar]

And about you comment, I guess I won't have problem with binding parameters because I use Eloquent.

[cha-cha]

Escape output, not input.

[cha-cha]

There's no need to alter data unless you actually use it. Filter input, escape output.

[AdamJones]

It should be pointed out that Laravel provides raw sql query support which isn't protected from injection at all. So there is always the chance that someone may build a site with some raw queries that do need manual cleaning.