{"id":28,"date":"2017-10-24T13:15:20","date_gmt":"2017-10-24T13:15:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iani.co\/blog\/?p=28"},"modified":"2017-10-26T09:46:26","modified_gmt":"2017-10-26T09:46:26","slug":"encoding-space-characters-in-jquery-ajax-request","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iani.co\/blog\/encoding-space-characters-in-jquery-ajax-request\/","title":{"rendered":"Encoding space characters in jQuery ajax request"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve run into an issue as I was working on a URL shortening tool. Obviously, this tool works with links or URLs. Some URLs can be very messy, let’s take for example Microsoft Forms or files in nested folders in SharePoint Online.<\/p>\n

Problem<\/h2>\n

As I was passing a long URL which contained ” ” space characters I’ve noticed that the jQuery.ajax function was encoding these characters to “+” (plus) sign and not the well known “%20”.\u00a0 Read 2354 articles, including this very interesting one<\/a> which states that “URL is still broken to this day”. The takeaway there is that when you encode the space characters you should follow this simple rule:<\/p>\n

“You should have %20<\/code> before the ?<\/code> and +<\/code> after.<\/strong>“<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even when using encodeURI() function or simply replace() function the value passed was still encoded by jQuery converting the ” ” or “%20” to “+”.<\/p>\n

Solution<\/h2>\n

But finally I found the solution and it was something very basic so that’s why I am sharing this with you. On the official jQuery.ajax() documentation <\/a> in the list of settings, there is this “processData” which is by default true.<\/p>\n

\n
processData<\/strong> (default: true<\/code>)<\/em><\/div>\n
Type: Boolean<\/a><\/em><\/div>\n
By default, data passed in to the data<\/code> option as an object (technically, anything other than a string) will be processed and transformed into a query string, fitting to the default content-type “application\/x-www-form-urlencoded”. If you want to send a DOMDocument, or other non-processed data, set this option to <\/em>false<\/em><\/code><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
<\/div>\n
Normally this is very useful because it processes the data passed but in my case it was messing up the data being sent.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve run into an issue as I was working on a URL shortening tool. Obviously, this tool works with links or URLs. Some URLs can be very messy, let’s take for example Microsoft Forms or files in nested folders in SharePoint Online. Problem As I was passing a long URL which contained ” ” space […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[10,9],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iani.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iani.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iani.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iani.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iani.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/iani.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53,"href":"https:\/\/iani.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions\/53"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iani.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iani.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iani.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}