Forum Discussion

jbrave's avatar
jbrave
Channel Surfer
15 years ago

maximum URL length?

Is there a limit to the size of urls that an RoUrlXfer will digest?

xfer = CreateObject("roURLTransfer")

xfer.seturl("http://www.google.com")

?xfer.geturl()

http://www.google.com

url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks.xml?consumer_key=----------------------&limit=21&offset=0&order=hotness&created_at[from]=2010-8-24"

xfer.seturl(url)

?xfer.GetUrl()

http://www.google.com

xfer.SetUrl("http://www.ibm.com")

?xfer.GetURl()

http://www.ibm.com

xfer.setURL("http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks.xml?consumer_key=----------------------&limit=21&offset=0&order=hotness&created_at[from]=2010-8-24")

?xfer.GetURl()

http://www.ibm.com

So that is why I've been tearing my hair out... Is this a bug or is there a reason for this? Any useful workarounds? now I know why my app broke last night when I added "&created_at[from]=2010-8-24" to the end of the URL, and why it broke in a way I couldn't trace easily (poster items showing up in the wrong category... because the URL didn't change)
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17 Replies

  • TheEndless's avatar
    TheEndless
    Channel Surfer
    15 years ago
    I think the problem is actually with your URL itself, not the length. You should URL encode your square brackets...

    http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks.xml?consumer_key=----------------------&limit=21&offset=0&order=hotness&created_at%5bfrom%5d=2010-8-24
  • renojim's avatar
    renojim
    Community Streaming Expert
    15 years ago
    The problem is the square brackets. Replace them with %1B and %1D respectively.

    Endless beat me to it!

    -JT
  • TheEndless's avatar
    TheEndless
    Channel Surfer
    15 years ago
    "renojim" wrote:
    The problem is the square brackets. Replace them with %1B and %1D respectively.

    Endless beat me to it!

    -JT

    %5B and %5D... not 1...
  • jbrave's avatar
    jbrave
    Channel Surfer
    15 years ago
    Would there be any benefit / problem with running the whole URL through URLEncode?
  • renojim's avatar
    renojim
    Community Streaming Expert
    15 years ago
    I've had mixed results with UrlEncode. I'd try it with whatever site you're trying to connect to and see if it works. In my case, I wanted some things encoded but not others and encoding everything didn't work. I believe it should work, but you never know until you try.

    -JT
  • renojim's avatar
    renojim
    Community Streaming Expert
    15 years ago
    "TheEndless" wrote:
    "renojim" wrote:
    The problem is the square brackets. Replace them with %1B and %1D respectively.

    Endless beat me to it!

    -JT

    %5B and %5D... not 1...


    Oops! That's what I get for trying to beat you to the punch!

    -JT
  • TheEndless's avatar
    TheEndless
    Channel Surfer
    15 years ago
    You can't do the whole URL, because it will encode the slashes, ampersands, and equals. You only want to URL encode the querystring parameters and values.
  • kbenson's avatar
    kbenson
    Visitor
    15 years ago
    "TheEndless" wrote:
    You can't do the whole URL, because it will encode the slashes, ampersands, and equals. You only want to URL encode the querystring parameters and values.


    And just so it's completely obvious to anyone who's just learning this, you encode the parameters and values not the whole query string. That is, you can't encode "foo=bar&this=that" as the "=" and "&" will be encoded (that's how you pass them in as variables). You need to encode each parameter name and value separately.
  • jbrave's avatar
    jbrave
    Channel Surfer
    15 years ago
    Ok, so just to make sure I get it, what is the criteria for whether a character should be URL encoded? one website I looked at said "all non-alphanumerics", but I think I really only want the "weird" characters like spaces and brackets?

    - Joel
  • TheEndless's avatar
    TheEndless
    Channel Surfer
    15 years ago
    "jbrave" wrote:
    Ok, so just to make sure I get it, what is the criteria for whether a character should be URL encoded? one website I looked at said "all non-alphanumerics", but I think I really only want the "weird" characters like spaces and brackets?

    - Joel

    You can just use the roURLTransfer object's Escape method, and not even worry about it. If you don't want to do it dynamically, then you can use a site like this: http://www.opinionatedgeek.com/dotnet/t ... ncode.aspx