[SOLVED] Java URI Builder build method replacing "?" character in the path

Java URI Builder build method replacing "?" character in the path

I have an API at the following path

/v0/segments/ch/abc/view/status/ACTIVE?sc=%s&expiryGteInMs=%d

I am building a Client using the URIBuilder in Java.

return UriBuilder
      .fromUri(config.getHost())
      .path(String.format(config.getPath(),request.List(), request.getTime()))
      .build();

The request contains a list to be substituted in place of %s and the time to be substituted in place of %d. But the request being formed has a path like this

/v0/segments/ch/abc/view/status/ACTIVE%3Fsc=FK,GR&expiryGteInMs=1611081000000

Basically the "?" character is being replaced by %3F. Can somebody help me with this, please?

P.S: I know that we can use the ".queryParam" option available in URIBuilder. Looking for the actual reason why this is happening?

Solution

Most probably library that you are using is encoding url, and ? encodes to %3F. Why this happens(in short): url could contain only specific set of character, and ? is not one of them, so, in order to transfer this character, we should encode it (so called Percent-encoding).

A bit longer explanation (taken from here):

URL encoding converts characters into a format that can be transmitted over the Internet.

URLs can only be sent over the Internet using the ASCII character-set.

Since URLs often contain characters outside the ASCII set, the URL has to be converted into a valid ASCII format.

URL encoding replaces unsafe ASCII characters with a "%" followed by two hexadecimal digits.

URLs cannot contain spaces. URL encoding normally replaces a space with a plus (+) sign or with %20.