MySQL Bugs: #67828: Crashing applets due to reading file.encoding system property

Bug #67828	Crashing applets due to reading file.encoding system property
Submitted:	6 Dec 2012 17:38	Modified:	26 Sep 2022 22:51
Reporter:	Pavel Drášil	Email Updates:
Status:	Closed	Impact on me:	None
Category:	Connector / J	Severity:	S3 (Non-critical)
Version:	5.1.22	OS:	Any
Assigned to:	Assigned Account	CPU Architecture:	Any

Description:
Since version 5.1.17, the com.mysql.jdbc.StringUtils class reads system property "file.encoding" in its static initialization. This makes using Connector/J in Applets very problematic, because by default Applets do not have the right to read this property. As a result, Applets using Connector/J crash severely due to the ExceptionInInitializerError.

How to repeat:
Connect to MySQL from any Applet running on Oracle JRE with unchanged java.policy file.

Thank you for the report.

Please provide small test case, demonstrating the problem.

Bug demonstration

Attachment: TestCase.zip (application/x-zip-compressed, text), 780.02 KiB.

Thank you for the feedback.

Verified as described.

Posted by developer:
 
Added the following entry to the Connector/J 8.0.31 changelog: 

"Using Connector/J in a Java applet caused an ExceptionInInitializerError and made the applet quit unexpectedly. This was because the com.mysql.jdbc.StringUtils class tried to read the system property file.encoding, which is in accessible by the java.applet.Applet class. With this fix, Connector/J avoids the error by using Charset.defaultCharset() instead to get the information it needs."

Posted by developer:
 
Updated the changelog entry to the following: 

"Due to some old limitations, when used with Java applets, Connector/J found out the default character set on a system by various workarounds like reading the system property file.encoding, using an OutpuStreamWriter, etc. With this fix, Connector/J now uses Charset.defaultCharset(), the standard method for the purpose."