I am creating an array of URLs and in my controller, using Controller.Json(array) to return the JsonResult back to a client. However one of the urls has "&" character. This character is getting encoded to \u0026. When I open this URL in the browser, the browser DOESNT interpret this as "&" character.
example: http://myserver.com/Controller/Action?id=1234\u0026lang=ENG
This doesnot lead to my controller action: Action(int id);
How can i decode this back to &. Any ideas would be useful.
Thanks.
According to the JSON spec, \u0026 is a valid part of a string, and represents the & character.
If whatever you are using to deserialise the JSON doesn't turn \u0026 back into &, then it's doing it wrong. You should use something that can deserialise it correctly, and not try to fix it after it is already broken.
Related
I have the following code to post data to a site: https://play.golang.org/p/e1g0Nd1kDh0
When I view the request in Fiddler, it shows as:
"jobTitle=Area Manager"
What I want it to do is send the string exactly as it is in the code (i.e. not encode the %20 to spaces), as it seems to be causing some confusion on the other side? An identical request made using a Python program works fine where the spaces are not added.
I've tried escaping it by doubling the % signs, but it doesn't seem to work. Any help would be great.
Thanks.
If you're trying to receive a literal %20 on the server side, then encode the % sign. It encodes to %25. So your postdata becomes:
data := "&jobTitle=Area%25%20Manager"
But if this is happening, there is probably a problem on the server side where the postdata is being decoded twice.
You can also pass the URL encode characters individually. In this case %25%32%30 = "%20"
I have a querystring parameter that is an encoded string that gets converted to Base64. That parameter is then embedded in a link within an email. When I click the link in the email, the querystring parameter has had all the + characters within it replaced by space characters. There are no other differences. Is there a method I can call to sanitise the string and effectively replace the spaces with pluses again. I'm currently doing a string replace which is a bit fat hack. Something is causing the replacement but I'm not sure what. Has anyone come across anything like this before?
Example - querystring parameter value within URL of the browser:
yo3rZZbZyG4UCN+L3pcTYJXmWEggnkW1qcyJk2uBrVTtGUSKIlBcJ8e9TSx8BHjHJv0JhI8H6LbIqUl+3lA7qn+lOgpSi3rCGN4bm5moOWcCA449C1Z3zj7J1FkOXH2HMox4VUZ7x7fF65MRwuBBmw==
Value of string within controller action:
yo3rZZbZyG4UCN L3pcTYJXmWEggnkW1qcyJk2uBrVTtGUSKIlBcJ8e9TSx8BHjHJv0JhI8H6LbIqUl 3lA7qn lOgpSi3rCGN4bm5moOWcCA449C1Z3zj7J1FkOXH2HMox4VUZ7x7fF65MRwuBBmw==
You should URL encode the base64 string to the link, so it is:
yo3rZZbZyG4UCN%2BL3pcTYJXmWEggnkW1qcyJk2uBrVTtGUSKIlBcJ8e9TSx8BHjHJv0JhI8H6LbIqUl%2B3lA7qn%2BlOgpSi3rCGN4bm5moOWcCA449C1Z3zj7J1FkOXH2HMox4VUZ7x7fF65MRwuBBmw%3D%3D
HttpUtility.UrlEncode(base64str) in .NET, or encodeURIComponent(base64str) in javascript
you can use System.Web.HttpServerUtility.UrlTokenEncode (from http://brockallen.com/2014/10/17/base64url-encoding/#comments)
It is doing this because the + sign is interpreted as a marker to say that another parameter follows. This is why it is getting mangled. You should URL encode your string before you pass it to the server.
Basically I need to pass three paramaters to a http as get. Here are the parameters
param1 = 3
param2 = 454
param3 = http://localhost:3000/another_test?another_param=4&another_param2=978
This transforms to
http://localhost:3000/test?param1=3¶m2=454¶m3=http://localhost:3000/another_test?another_param=4&another_param2=978
I am just confused whether the URL formed is correct or not. Will this work or is there anyother way to do this. I am using Rails. I did a decode and clicked on the link and I still see the above URL coming. Will this work on the receiever side, meaning will it be decoded as I had intended.
Please advise.
It should work as long as you url encode the params. In that case the & and ? will be transformed, making it possible for Rails to differentiate between the query string parameters and the query string delimiters.
To ensure that it is encoded you can use Rack::Utils.escape or Hash#to_query.
This will be decoded as:
param1=3
param2=454
param3=http://localhost:3000/another_test?another_param=4
another_param2=978
You need to encode param3, or at minimum replace the ampersands in it with the correct URL encoding, in order for it to match back up to your input parameters.
In my asp.net mvc page I create a link that renders as followed:
http://localhost:3035/Formula/OverView?colorId=349405&paintCode=744&name=BRILLANT%20SILVER&formulaId=570230
According to the W3C validator, this is not correct and it errors after the first ampersand. It complains about the & not being encoded and the entity &p not recognised etc.
AFAIK the & shouldn't be encoded because it is a separator for the key value pair.
For those who care: I send these pars as querystring and not as "/" seperated values because there is no decent way of passing on optional parameters that I know of.
To put all the bits together:
an anchor (<a>) tag's href attribute needs an encoded value
& encodes to &
to encode an '&' when it is part of your parameter's value, use %26
Wouldn't encoding the ampersand into & make it part of my parameter's value?
I need it to seperate the second variable from the first
Indeed, by encoding my href value, I do get rid of the errors. What I'm wondering now however is what to do if for example my colorId would be "123&456", where the ampersand is part of the value.
Since the separator has to be encoded, what to do with encoded ampersands. Do they need to be encoded twice so to speak?
So to get the url:
www.mySite.com/search?query=123&456&page=1
What should my href value be?
Also, I think I'm about the first person in the world to care about this.. go check the www and count the pages that get their query string validated in the W3C validator..
Entities which are part of the attributes should be encoded, generally. Thus you need & instead of just &
It works even if it doesn't validate because most browsers are very, very, very lenient in what to accept.
In addition, if you are outputting XHTML you have to encode every entity everywhere, not just inside the attributes.
All HTML attributes need to use character entities. You only don't need to change & into & within script blocks.
Whatever
Anywhere in an HTML document that you want an & to display directly next to something other than whitespace, you need to use the character entity &. If it is part of an attribute, the & will work as though it was an &. If the document is XHTML, you need to use character entities everywhere, even if you don't have something immediately next to the &. You can also use other character entities as part of attributes to treat them as though they were the actual characters.
If you want to use an ampersand as part of a URL in a way other than as a separator for parameters, you should use %26.
As an example...
Hello
Would send the user to http://localhost/Hello, with name=Bob and text=you & me "forever".
This is a slightly confusing concept to some people, I've found. When you put & in a HTML page, such as in <a href="abc?def=5&ghi=10">, the URL is actually abc?def=5&ghi=10. The HTML parser converts the entity to an ampersand.
Think of exactly the same as how you need to escape quotes in a string:
// though you define your string like this:
myString = "this is \"something\" you know?"
// the string is ACTUALLY: this is "something" you know?
// when you look at the HTML, you see:
<a href="foo?bar=1&baz=2">
// but the url is ACTUALLY: foo?bar=1&bar=2
I'm trying to pass u url as parameter to a get method.
I defined a route that accepts a {*url} parameter so I can send "/" characters without it separating my parameter.
As soon as there is a ":" in the url (like in http: or localhost:3857 for example), the method never gets hit.
The Html.ActionLink method escapes it's parameter itself, but it doesn't seem to escape the ':'. I cannot escape it manually because then the escape characters get escaped by the very same Html.Actionlink method.
any ideas?
Use EncodeUrl before you pass it, and then decode it on the other side.
I ran into the same problem. I ended up removing the Html.ActionLink and replaced it with:
#item.Title
#item.ID is a url returned from the netflix api, example http://api.netflix.com/catalog/titles/series/70021357/seasons/70021357. Now my url looks like this - /Home/Movies?id=http://api.netflix.com/catalog/titles/series/70021357/seasons/70021357, and I just used Request.QueryString to get the value in the controller:
Request.QueryString.Get("id")
Probably not ideal but it works for now.
It's a bit of a hack, but you could replace the ':' with '%3A' (which is the escaped form), and see what the ActionLink does with it. If it's escaped once more, you'd have to replace the twice-escaped version back to ':' at the server, otherwise just replace '%3A' back to ':'