Sync: say why the dedicated-request URL check reads the request raw

[Nikschavan]

Proposed changes

• The two phpcs:ignore lines in Dedicated_Sender named the sniffs but not the reason. They now say it: the value is only substring-matched against a fixed literal, never output or stored.
• No code change. The earlier commits on this branch sanitized the nonces and ran REQUEST_URI / rest_route through esc_url_raw(); the last commit reverts that — the nonce lines were a no-op and esc_url_raw() on a route path changes the value without a security gain.

Flagged by the WordPress.org plugin review tooling while the standalone Jetpack Stats plugin was under review. The current comments were added for an earlier .org review (p9dueE-8ca-p2, #37402), which approved the code; that context goes into the reply.

Related product discussion/links

• WordPress.org plugin review of the standalone Jetpack Stats plugin, second automated round.

Does this pull request change what data or activity we track or use?

No.

Testing instructions

• composer phpcs:lint projects/packages/sync/src/class-dedicated-sender.php passes with the reasons on the two ignores.

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Code Coverage Summary

This PR did not change code coverage!

That could be good or bad, depending on the situation. Everything covered before, and still is? Great! Nothing was covered before? Not so great. 🤷

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[coder-karen]

👋 Thanks for looking into this @Nikschavan .

The nonce sanitization looks to be safe here, and is a similar pattern as used elsewhere in the monorepo in other packages / plugins in a handful of other places (but not in far, far more instances). That said, it shouldn't be needed.

The esc_url_raw changes on the other hand have no security benefit, and can result in a real behavior change.

• rest_route is a REST route path rather than a URL, and esc_url_raw() treats it as one, appending 'http://' if a value reaches $_GET still percent-encoded. In our case, the strpos would still work, but we're changing the behavior unnecessarily here, potentially dangerously if we then make any further changes later.

The comments could be updated to mention that the value is only substring-matched against a fixed literal; never output or stored (and that can be mentioned to the WP.org reviewers).

Noting as well that the existing comments were added due to a WP.org review itself: p9dueE-8ca-p2 (related PR: #37402)

These files already exist within WP.org for several plugins as the vendor files and have done for some time. So it would seem these were likely from AI reviews not considering the history and context, and given the current state was already approved by them it should warrant some push back here.

[Nikschavan]

Thank you for the context from the previous review — I did not have it, and it is the strongest point for the reply to .org. I reverted the nonce and esc_url_raw() changes in 3f58292 and kept only your suggestion: the two phpcs ignores now say the value is only substring-matched against a fixed literal and never output or stored. Could you take another look?