[SOLVED] Spring HATEOAS relation link encoding

Spring HATEOAS relation link encoding

I recently updated spring-hateoas from 1.3.7 to 2.2.0.

There I discovered that the query part of a link relation is now encoded. Here is the comparison:

Link in version 1.3.7

"_links": {
    "before": {
        "href": "https://localhost:8080/api/time?before=2024-03-01T06:08:07Z&itemsPerPage=10"
    }
}

Link in version 2.2.0

"_links": {
    "before": {
        "href": "http://localhost:8080/api/time?before=2024-03-01T06%3A08%3A07Z&itemsPerPage=10"
    }
}

I am creating the link like

result
  .add(
    linkTo(
      methodOn(TimeController.class).before(instant, itemsPerPage)
    )
  .withRel("before"));

When I updated, I didn't expect that this will change and it's now the case that it could possibly break API clients, since they may have encoded the URL on their end.

I tried to get into the code where the encoding happens. I saw that in org.springframework.hateoas.server.core.WebHandler at some point TemplateVariable.prepareAndEncode(Object value) is called and the values get encoded.

So I am wondering if there is a general setting that I'm missing to avoid this automatic encoding or if I have to decode it manually.

I totally understand why things are encoded now however I'd also like to see some flexibility in that case.

Solution

Seems to be to discussed here on github for 1.4, and is related to RFC 6570.

Hopefully your api consumers don't reencode on their end :D