Question

I have a Spring-MVC application with Freemarker as the view component.

In my templates, several links are generated which point back to my application and which include URL parameters containing a hash key (#).

Example:

parameter: Q#106368 11

URL generated by Freemarker with encoded param: testurl.html?key=Q%23106368%2011

I use JavaScript to redirect to this URL (reason: I use JS to manage loading of 2 frames at the same time).

The redirect method is simple:

    function redir(url) {
        window.location.href = url;
    }

The JS call generated by Freemarker looks like

<a href="javascript:redir('http://localhost:8080/testappp/testurl.html?key=Q%23106368%2011');">test</a>

My problem is that the browser / Javascript converts back the URL encoded parameter, thinks there is a # and cuts off there.

When I use window.location.href='http://...' directly it works. Only when using the method parameter it seems to be magically URL decoded and then the redirect fails because the URL gets cut off at the #.

Is there an easy way to transmit the parameter correctly?

I am aware that I could replace the #, e.g. with $$$hash$$$, in the template and do the replacement on the server side again. But there are so many places I would have to change…

Answer 1

As Marc B commented, it is necessary to URL encode again. The method would be encodeURI(). However, this method does not encode the # sign. For my specific use case, I have to replace the # sign with %23 after the encoding.

The redirect JS method finally looks like:

    function redir(url) {
        url = encodeURI(url);
        url = url.replace(/#/g, '%23');
        window.location.href = url;
    }

Comparing escape(), encodeURI(), and encodeURIComponent()