Error on non-regex search for invalid regex string

[sleepinggenius2]

NetBox version

v3.4.2

Python version

3.8

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create a Site with Name = "Foo (Bar)" and Slug = "foo-bar"
2. Perform a default global search or explicit Partial match search for the string "(Bar"
3. Receive error

Expected Behavior

The Site should have been found and the string appropriately highlighted in the result. I believe this is caused by the use of re.split in utilities.utils.highlight_string, as I could not find where the highlight string is being escaped for non-regex searches.

Observed Behavior

The following error is received:

<class 're.error'>

missing ), unterminated subpattern at position 0

Python version: 3.8.10
NetBox version: 3.4.2

[sleepinggenius2]

Looking at the solution that was merged, it seems like it is now escaping everything, including search strings that were supposed to be regex. Do we not still want to maintain that functionality for regex searches? It seems to make more sense to me to do something like:

netbox/netbox/netbox/views/misc.py

Line 164 in 93685d9

highlight = form.cleaned_data['q']

to

highlight = re.escape(form.cleaned_data['q']) if lookup != LookupTypes.REGEX else form.cleaned_data['q']

[kkthxbye-code]

@sleepinggenius2 - Good catch, I just totally forgot regex seach was added. Do you want to test your proposal and submit a PR?

[sleepinggenius2]

I can try, but it will take me a bit to get a development environment set back up again for 3.4. I'm also not quite sure how to go about formal testing, as I don't see where there are currently test cases defined for the search functionality and my knowledge of Python and Django is not at a level where I would even know how to begin to do that from scratch. I can tell you that changing that line (and adding import re to the file) on our server makes the error go away and seems to allow it to highlight properly for all the lookup types.

[jeremystretch]

I think I've fixed this in 5911041. Thanks for the catch.

[opericgithub]

I still receive the same error in 3.4.3. I have device named "(9)123" (without quotes). When searching for "(9" without quotes in global search I get the error, but when searching for "(9)" I get regular search results.

[sleepinggenius2]

Yeah, I don't see where the non-regex path was actually impacted. I think this:

netbox/netbox/netbox/views/misc.py

Line 171 in 97723b1

highlight = form.cleaned_data['q']

should have been this:

highlight = re.escape(form.cleaned_data['q'])

or the escaping from #11525 should have been kept here:

netbox/netbox/utilities/utils.py

Line 530 in 97723b1

pre, match, post = re.split(fr'({highlight})', value, maxsplit=1, flags=re.IGNORECASE)

[jeremystretch]

Whoops. In introducing a new logic path for regex searches I seem to have lost the escape function.