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coldfusionlinkedin-apicfhttp

cfhttp how to not encode plus sign

Situation: I am trying to call the LinkedIn API from a ColdFusion CFC to get the user's profile and network (connections). The LinkedIn API states that to do this you must call a URL with scope=r_fullprofile+r_network.

Issue: ColdFusion is automatically encoding the URL, so the plus sign is getting encoded, and LinkedIn is rejecting my call. Is there any way around this? I've posted a link below to some code snippets on github which I believe illustrate the issue.

https://gist.github.com/4535364

Any help would be appreciated!

Solution

  • The scope field is a space delimited list.

    The + character is commonly used as a shortcut for space, since it's more readable than %20 (which is what space encodes to).

    If using a plus character results in an encoded plus (%2B) being sent, then you are left with two other ways of putting the space into the URL:

    1. using a literal space character, or
    2. using an encoded space %20

    Try both of those options, ideally using a network snifer (e.g. WireShark) so that you can see accurately what is being sent.

    Update: As per comments below, %20 is correct, but the signature based string needs to be encoded again, so for that the % becomes %25, giving a result of %2520.