Question

I have a redir page that takes some query parameters, notably a “page” parameter which, in turn, has its own query parameters. A simplified version might look like this.

http://www.example.com/redir.aspx?page=%5Bescaped address]&two=2

The following test fails because the System.Uri constructor is unescaping my inner page’s parameters. (kthx!)

Assert.AreEqual(
   "http://www.ex.com/redir.aspx?page=inner.htm%3Fone%3D1%26two%3D2&three=3",
   new Uri("http://www.ex.com/redir.aspx?page=inner.htm%3Fone%3D1%26two%3D2&three=3").ToString());

I’m actually getting http://www.ex.com/?page=inner.htm?one=1&two=2&three=3 which doesn’t even look like a decent URI to me, what with the 2 question marks and don’t really whose parameter that “three” is. As you can see from the test, inner.htm has 2 parameters, one and two, and three is for redir.

Am I all wet? Is this the right way to pass a URI to a URI?

Answer 1

The following test fails because the System.Uri constructor is
unescaping my inner page’s parameters.

No, the Uri constructor is doing the right thing. The test is failing because you’re calling Uri.ToString(), which is broken by design.

Don’t use Uri.ToString(). Use Uri.AbsoluteUri instead.

// this works
Assert.AreEqual(
    "http://www.ex.com/redir.aspx?page=inner.htm%3Fone%3D1%26two%3D2&three=3",
    new Uri("http://www.ex.com/redir.aspx?page=inner.htm%3Fone%3D1%26two%3D2&three=3").AbsoluteUri);