Steps to reproduce the issue

i apologize, but i do not know how to reproduce the problem as it just happened all sudenly and it is easier to fix the issue than to find on what had changed.

symptoms:
router does not recognize paths and thus doesn't create proper variables for the SEF path and always uses the default menu item.

we have a manu structure with thousands of records - ecommerce system is synchronized with joomla manu system. The urls within #__menu look like this (path/route):

Airsoft-5/Zbrane/Kratke_manualy

but joomla does comparison with LOWER CASE values and thus doesn't select proper menu.

ORIGINAL CODE:
if ($length > 0 && JString::strpos($route_lowercase.'/', $item->route.'/') === 0 && $item->type != 'menulink' && (!$app->getLanguageFilter() || $item->language == '*' || $item->language == $lang_tag))

UPDATED CODE (may not support utf8 chars)
if ($length > 0 && stripos($route_lowercase.'/', $item->route.'/') === 0 && $item->type != 'menulink' && (!$app->getLanguageFilter() || $item->language == '*' || $item->language == $lang_tag))

Expected result

as you can see above:
JString::strpos

does case sensitive comparison on two values (current URL and db's path) of which one is LOWERCASE and thus should always return negative results !

SECOND ISSUE:

• why is the search done in php when you can do the search for the result with a sql query and instead of loading all menus with thousands of items, you may only need to query the single row. Because of a limit of 768 chars per InnoDB index (which is 256 utf8 characters, or 192 utf8mb4 chars) it may be necessary to create a new hashed value column for this purpose.

Actual result

System information (as much as possible)

Running on

Perconna Mysql5.6.15
Php5.5.12 + mysqldn
Joomla 2.5.18 and 2.5.20 share the same code here

Our #__menu definition

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS udx46_menu (
id int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
menutype varchar(24) NOT NULL COMMENT 'The type of menu this item belongs to. FK to #__menu_types.menutype',
title varchar(255) NOT NULL COMMENT 'The display title of the menu item.',
alias varchar(255) CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin NOT NULL COMMENT 'The SEF alias of the menu item.',
note varchar(255) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
path varchar(1024) NOT NULL COMMENT 'The computed path of the menu item based on the alias field.',
link varchar(1024) NOT NULL COMMENT 'The actually link the menu item refers to.',
type varchar(16) NOT NULL COMMENT 'The type of link: Component, URL, Alias, Separator',
published tinyint(4) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0' COMMENT 'The published state of the menu link.',
parent_id int(10) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '1' COMMENT 'The parent menu item in the menu tree.',
level int(10) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0' COMMENT 'The relative level in the tree.',
component_id int(10) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0' COMMENT 'FK to #__extensions.id',
ordering int(11) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0' COMMENT 'The relative ordering of the menu item in the tree.',
checked_out int(10) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0' COMMENT 'FK to #__users.id',
checked_out_time timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT '0000-00-00 00:00:00' COMMENT 'The time the menu item was checked out.',
browserNav tinyint(4) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0' COMMENT 'The click behaviour of the link.',
access int(10) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0' COMMENT 'The access level required to view the menu item.',
img varchar(255) NOT NULL COMMENT 'The image of the menu item.',
template_style_id int(10) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
params text NOT NULL COMMENT 'JSON encoded data for the menu item.',
lft int(11) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0' COMMENT 'Nested set lft.',
rgt int(11) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0' COMMENT 'Nested set rgt.',
home tinyint(3) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0' COMMENT 'Indicates if this menu item is the home or default page.',
language char(7) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
client_id tinyint(4) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
PRIMARY KEY (id),
UNIQUE KEY idx_client_id_parent_id_alias_language (client_id,parent_id,alias,language),
KEY idx_componentid (component_id,menutype,published,access),
KEY idx_menutype (menutype),
KEY idx_left_right (lft,rgt),
KEY idx_alias (alias),
KEY idx_path (path(255)),
KEY idx_language (language)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 AUTO_INCREMENT=5236 ;

Additional comments