[HTTPCORE-738] URIBuilder - path with asterisk * is encoded differently compared to java.lang.URI

• Type: Bug
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Invalid
• Affects Version/s: 5.2.1
• Component/s: HttpCore
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Florin Slev
• Created: 05/Apr/23 07:42
• Updated: 05/Apr/23 20:05
• Resolved: 05/Apr/23 16:16

Description

It seems Apache URIBuilder encodes URL asterisk characters as %2A.

While  java.lang.URI doesn't:
 

    final URI uri = new URI("http", null, "localhost", 80, "/books*", null, null);
    final URIBuilder uribuilder = new URIBuilder().setScheme("http").setHost("localhost").setPort(80).setPath("/books*");
    final URI result = uribuilder.build();
    assertEquals(uri, result);
 

=>

expected: <http://localhost:80/books*> but was: <http://localhost:80/books%2A>

According to https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1738.txt

Reserved:

   Usually a URL has the same interpretation when an octet is
   represented by a character and when it encoded. However, this is not
   true for reserved characters: encoding a character reserved for a
   particular scheme may change the semantics of a URL.

   Thus, only alphanumerics, the special characters "$-_.+!*'(),", and
   reserved characters used for their reserved purposes may be used
   unencoded within a URL.

Is the the encoding of asterisk and the whole set of special chars from the RFC above $-_.+!*'() intended inside Apache URIBuilder ?

My use case is that I'm using Apache HTTP client to send requests to a remote endpoint containing * inside the URL. The server does not recognize the %2A encoding. I have to explicitly decode it back to asterisk * in order to work.