When action=parse receives an invalid title input, it defaults to returning:
<parse displaytitle="API">
This can be seen at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=parse&title=[a.
This behavior is unexpected and wrong.
Version: unspecified
Severity: normal
(In reply to comment #0)
This behavior is unexpected and wrong.
What should it do, in your opinion? Die with an error?
(In reply to comment #1)
(In reply to comment #0)
This behavior is unexpected and wrong.
What should it do, in your opinion? Die with an error?
Something like that, yes. It looks like the behavior of other modules that receive invalid titles is to mark the title as invalid (e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&titles=abc|abc{). Perhaps doing the same here makes sense. I'm not sure what the correct behavior is, I just know that returning displaytitle="API" is wrong.
In this particular case, parsing can be (and is) context-specific (i.e., the title can definitely alter what is returned), so perhaps flatly dying with an error makes more sense.