How do we manage a '#' in the Rest API query parameter [closed] - go

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I am facing a challenge with extracting the complete value out of the query param.
For instance, I have a localhost:8080/myAPI?name=Shop & stop #1234
I have the issue with & as well but atleast the content after & is getting populated as a separate param. I wrote some logic to manage it.
Coming to #, the content after # is not at all getting populated. I am using net/http library.
Did anyone face the similar issue?

Answer 1

First, in URLs the & character has special meaning: it spearates query parameters. So if the data you encode in the URL contains & characters, it has to be escaped. url.QueryEscape() can show you how the escaped form looks like:
fmt.Println(url.QueryEscape("Shop & stop "))
It outputs:
Shop+%26+stop+
Note that & is escaped like %26, and also spaces are substituted with a + sign.
So your valid input URL should look like this:
rawURL := "http://localhost:8080/myAPI?name=Shop+%26+stop+#23452"
Use the net/url package to parse valid URLs, it also supports getting the parameter values and the fragment you're looking for (the fragment is the remaining part after the # character):
u, err := url.Parse(rawURL)
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
fmt.Println(u.Query().Get("name"))
fmt.Println(u.Fragment)
This outputs:
Shop & stop
23452
Try the examples on the Go Playground.

Answer 2

The bytes &, # and space have special meaning in a URL. These bytes must be escaped when included in a query value.
Use url.Values to create the escaped query:
v := url.Values{}
v.Set("name", "Shop & Stop #23452")
q := v.Encode()
u := "http://localhost:8080/myAPI?" + q
fmt.Println(u) // prints http://localhost:8080/myAPI?name=Shop+%26+stop+%2323452
You can also construct the URL using the url.URL type instead of string concatenation.
v := url.Values{}
v.Set("name", "Shop & Stop #23452")
u := url.URL{Scheme: "http", Host: "localhost:8080", Path: "/myapi", RawQuery: v.Encode()}
s := u.String()
fmt.Println(s) // prints http://localhost:8080/myAPI?name=Shop+%26+stop+%2323452
The url package encodes the # as %23. Most http server libraries will decode the %23 back to #. Here's an example using Go's net/http package:
name := req.FormValue("name") // name is "Shop & Stop #23452"
Run a complete client and server example on the Go Playground.