Re: Trouble with Unicode in URLs

["Iñaki Baz Castillo" <ibc@aliax.net>]

El Viernes, 15 de Enero de 2010, Gaius escribió:
> I have a Rails app in which I'd like to use some Unicode URLs:
> 
>     # in routes.rb:
>     map.resources 'proteges', :as => 'protégés', :only => [:index]
> 
> When I go to http://localhost:3000/protégés, I get
> 
>     No route matches "/prot%C3%A9g%C3%A9s" with {:method=>:get}
> 
> That was on Mongrel,

Unicode symbols are not allowed in URL according to its BNF grammar. So the 
client (the web browser in your case) hex-escapes these symbols.

This is: the client is sending a request like:

  GET /prot%C3%A9g%C3%A9s HTTP/1.1

which is correct.

Then the server must hex-unescape it, and this is what you do with your Rack 
middleware :)

Rack by itself doesn't require that the URL must be hex-unescaped before 
passing then to the application, so if a task for your application to do it.



> though I also tried Passenger.

And the same happened? I don't think so as Apache unescapes the URL before 
passing the request to the backend (in this case mod_rack). I've checked it 
before: when a request with hex-escaped URL arrives to Apache it unescapes 
before passing the data to mod_rack so you get the Rack variables hex-
unescaped (you should already see the unicode symbols).

I wonder how is possible your Apache not to unescape the URL before passing it 
to Rack, could you please re-check it? which Apache version do you use?


-- 
Iñaki Baz Castillo <ibc@aliax.net>