Fetch API information for stocks with ^ in the ticker name

Question

I need some help calling the AlphaVantage stock market API. For the most part, it works nicely but when it comes to requesting data from stocks that have an ^ symbol in their ticker, something goes wrong.

I get the API response with this code:

var url = "https://www.alphavantage.co/query?function=TIME_SERIES_DAILY_ADJUSTED&symbol=^vvix&apikey=<KEY>", 
   response = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url),
   json = JSON.parse(response);
Logger.log(json);

and get this error:

Invalid argument: https://www.alphavantage.co/query?function=TIME_SERIES_DAILY_ADJUSTED&

The ticker symbol of the requested stock is ^vvix. If I replace the symbol with like vix (another valid ticker) the code works. Thus, I assume the error has something to do with the ^ sign, but the ^ sign is part of the ticker symbol.

If i use

=IMPORTDATA("https://www.alphavantage.co/query?function=TIME_SERIES_DAILY_ADJUSTED&symbol=^vvix&apikey=K9D4PO855OG03KNM")

as a Google Sheets formula, the ^ is not a problem and the data is retrieved

Where is the difference?

Is ^ an invalid character in a JavaScript string?
Any idea whats the problem?

Answer 1

The caret ("^") is NOT a valid URL character and must be percent encoded if you follow the recommendations of the IETF. This is one of the "unsafe" characters defined in RFC1738

Use %5E in place of ^.

More generally, wrap the symbol with:

encodeURI(symbol)