Strange Ticketmaster Validation

The most important thing that you can do for the security of your web application is to validate all user input. That said, sometimes things can get out of hand.

I have DC United season tickets with a few friends. One (possibly the only) nice thing about DC United using ticket master is that they have an online interface to manage your tickets. You can print your tickets online or, if you’re not going to use them, email the tickets to someone else. This weekend 2 of us couldn’t go so I went online to forward our seats to another friend.

Unfortunately I then got this validation error:

I’m not sure why I should only be allowed to forward consecutive tickets. This validation is particularly strange because I was allowed to forward each of the tickets individually without any problem.

So make sure you validate for safety, but don’t cripple your application arbitrarily.