I came across an interesting question while working with Spring and REST API and that problem is: Is the path limited to a certain number of characters in Spring?
The code is as follows
@RequestMapping(value = {REST_PREFIX + "/{key}"}, method = {RequestMethod.GET})
public DashboardItem getExceptionByKey(@PathVariable("key") String key, HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse httpResponse_p) {
log.info("URL is {}", request.getRequestURL());
log.info("Key is {}", key);
return InspectionUtils.getExceptionByKey(key);
}
An example of a key is
67E4D2C089CBCCA2A9732F6986124C6B10.243.2.107#0EEE5EAB06ED4FFF82A8934F7058860C#79A2F0C170A028A3B0410F0F16303F41
When sending the request I made sure to encode the URL and in my program the URL I am receiving is the following
/rest/exceptions/67E4D2C089CBCCA2A9732F6986124C6B10.243.2.107#0EEE5EAB06ED4FFF82A8934F7058860C#79A2F0C170A028A3B0410F0F16303F41
Thus I am receiving the hole key, but when it parses it, the variable key is only
67E4D2C089CBCCA2A9732F6986124C6B10.243.2
I thought that it may be special characters, but it doesn't look like it. My second guess is that there is a limitation for the length of the path.
So my question to you is if there is a limitation regarding the path or is there another problem?
Thank you
This is some kind of spring convention that treats everything after the last dot as a file extension and cuts it off. You could simply try adding a trailing / in your request mapping and the request.
I.e. REST_PREFIX + "/{key}/"
For a more complicated but better solution if you are not the one calling your API see this question
It must be the hash # character in your key which is not getting URL encoded. And since anything that comes after # in the URL represents different fragments of the HTML page, it never gets sent to the server.
On using javascript's encodeURIComponent() on your key i got:
67E4D2C089CBCCA2A9732F6986124C6B10.243.2.107%230EEE5EAB06ED4FFF82A8934F7058860C%2379A2F0C170A028A3B0410F0F16303F41
Notice the # character is now encoded. Try this, but you might need to decode it on your server.
The # character has a special meaning in a URL. It is a fragment identifier, and it is used to jump to a certain part of a page (instead of landing at the top). To avoid this, encode the character as %23.