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Asked: 2026-06-09T15:13:22+00:00

I have a RESTlet application embedded in a Tomcat server and clients are complaining

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I have a RESTlet application embedded in a Tomcat server and clients are complaining that % symbols in @FormParm parameters are doubly decoded in the RESTlet framework causing a server error 500.

My questions are:
Do the clients need to doubly encode percent symbols (e.g. send xx%2525xx to represent the five character sequence “xx%xx”)?
If so, is this a bug in the RESTlet framework or the common way of encoding form parameters?
If not, how am I misusing the RESTlet framework?

My API looks like

//... many imports omitted.
import javax.ws.rs.Consumes;
import javax.ws.rs.FormParam;
import javax.ws.rs.GET;
import javax.ws.rs.Path;
import javax.ws.rs.PathParam;
import javax.ws.rs.WebApplicationException;
import javax.ws.rs.core.HttpHeaders;

@Path("/{session}/foo/")
@Transactional(propagation = Propagation.REQUIRED)

 /**  ........
  */
public class DocumentService extends BaseService {
// ...
     */
  @POST
  @Path("/{path:.*}/")
  @Consumes({"application/x-www-form-urlencoded"})
  @Produces({"application/json"})
  public Response alterDocument(final @Context UriInfo ui, 
    final @Context HttpHeaders hh,
    final @PathParam("session") String sessionToken,
    final @PathParam("path") String path,
    @FormParam("name") String name) throws WebApplicationException {
      /// code here not reached on call described below ....
    }

A curl command like:

curl -H “Accept: application/json” -d “name=100%25+working” http://${host}/api/sessionx21/foo/home/

Generates a server-side stack trace that looks like:

Apr 2, 2012 5:15:20 PM org.restlet.ext.jaxrs.internal.util.ExceptionHandler methodInvokeException
WARNING: Can not invoke the resource method
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: URLDecoder: Illegal hex characters in escape (%) pattern – For input string: ” w”
   at java.net.URLDecoder.decode(URLDecoder.java:173)
   at org.restlet.data.Reference.decode(Reference.java:170)
   at org.restlet.data.Reference.decode(Reference.java:143)
   at org.restlet.ext.jaxrs.internal.wrappers.params.ParameterList$AbstractParamGetter.convertParamValue(ParameterList.java:186)
   at org.restlet.ext.jaxrs.internal.wrappers.params.ParameterList$AbstractParamGetter.convertParamValue(ParameterList.java:166)
   at org.restlet.ext.jaxrs.internal.wrappers.params.ParameterList$FormOrQueryParamGetter.getParamValue(ParameterList.java:529)
   at org.restlet.ext.jaxrs.internal.wrappers.params.ParameterList$FormParamGetter.getParamValue(ParameterList.java:561)
   at org.restlet.ext.jaxrs.internal.wrappers.params.ParameterList$AbstractParamGetter.getValue(ParameterList.java:409)
   at org.restlet.ext.jaxrs.internal.wrappers.params.ParameterList.get(ParameterList.java:1096)
   at org.restlet.ext.jaxrs.internal.wrappers.AbstractMethodWrapper.internalInvoke(AbstractMethodWrapper.java:166)

My pom.xml file contains

    <repository>
      <id>maven-restlet</id>
      <name>Public online Restlet repository</name>
      <url>http://maven.restlet.org</url>
    </repository>
....
       <jaxb.version>2.1</jaxb.version>
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I know this question posted long time ago, but maybe someone will still find it useful.
    I had the same problem today.

    After digging the restlet code – it seems like there is a bug of url-decoding the parameters twice.
    Workaround for this is to annotate the method with @Encoded. This annotation mark not to decode the paramaters, so it will only be decoded once.

    @POST
@Path("/{path:.*}/")
@Encoded
@Consumes({"application/x-www-form-urlencoded"})
@Produces({"application/json"})
public Response alterDocument(final @Context UriInfo ui, 
  final @Context HttpHeaders hh,
  final @PathParam("session") String sessionToken,
  final @PathParam("path") String path,
  @FormParam("name") String name) throws WebApplicationException {
    /// code here not reached on call described below ....
 }
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