Volley send request without encoding it

Question

I'm trying to send a HTTP request to a wifi controller, with a normal String. My String is API:W/PSS:12345 but when sent via my Android app, the controller recieves API=W%2FPSS%3A12345. I know this happens due to the header value content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded.

However, in my request I've overriden the method:

public String getBodyContentType() {
    return "text/html;";
}

to set the content type to plain text, but volley still encodes it before sending it. (Using a REST client on my PC, sends the request to the controller without encoding it)

Is there a way to send my string as plain text without volley encoding it? The controller is low level so I do not want to add any encoding on both sides, just send plain strings.

Answer 1

After digging through the volley source code, I found the culprit to be that a java URLEncoder.encode() method is called, which will encode the string no matter what... I skipped this with a very hack-y way. If any of you have a better way of doing this PLEASE let me know, as this is very ugly:

@Override
public String getBodyContentType() {
    //for settings the content=type header, the right way...
    return return "text/html";
}

@Override
public byte[] getBody() throws AuthFailureError {
    Map<String, String> params = getParams();
        if (params != null && params.size() > 0) {
            return encodeParameters(params, getParamsEncoding());
        }
    return null; 
}

//Hax.......
private byte[] encodeParameters(Map<String, String> params, String paramsEncoding){
    StringBuilder encodedParams = new StringBuilder();
        try {
            for (Map.Entry<String, String> entry : params.entrySet()) {
                encodedParams.append(entry.getKey());
                //encodedParams.append(':');
                encodedParams.append(entry.
                //encodedParams.append('&');
            }
            return encodedParams.toString().getBytes(paramsEncoding);
        } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException uee) {
            throw new RuntimeException("Encoding not supported: " + paramsEncoding, uee);
        }
}

The source code of volley is here, you can take a look at how it encodes items: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/volley/+/idea133/src/com/android/volley/Request.java