ServiceStack URI encoding

Question

I'm using ServiceStack for a while now and I'm very happy with the functionality it provides. Already implemented serveral services with it and it works like a charm.

Recently however I've faced a problem with calling other service with a sophisticated URL that has to be encoded properly.

The code is the following:

The Request:

[Route("/instruments/{Names}")]
internal class Request
{
    public List<string> Names { get; set; }
}

And the method call:

var request = new Request { Names = list };
var c = new JsonServiceClient("http://host:12345/");

Response[] response;
try
{
    response = c.Get<Response[]>(request);
}
catch (WebServiceException ex)
{
    HandleWebException(ex, list);
    yield break;
}

And now the problem is that sometimes the name can contain a special characters like space or /. I'd like to have those propery encoded. For instance I'd like to be able to call the remote service with the following parameters: "D\S N" with is supposed to be encoded to "D%5CS%20N". So the called URL should look something like this:

http://host:12345/instruments/D%5CS%20N

And now the problem is that JsonServiceClient does the bad encoding here. What I call is actually:

http://host:12345/instruments/D/S%20N

With is obviously wrong. Any help how to sort this out is appeciated.

Answer 1

You shouldn't register complex types like List<T> in the PathInfo, try with a single string:

[Route("/instruments/{Name}")]
public class Request
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
}

Or take it out of the /pathinfo so it will get serialized as a complex type on the QueryString:

[Route("/instruments")]
public class Request
{
    public List<string> Names { get; set; }
}

Answer 2

I believe ServiceStack could be improved here.

If I use a request DTO defined like this:

[Route("/hello/{Name}/{Message}")]
public class Hello
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Message { get; set; }
}

Then a client calling like this:

var resp = cli.Get(new Hello { Message = "test", Name = "foo/bar" });

will fail. Same happens if I replace the slash with a backslash.

I have made a patch to ServiceStack that fixes this behaviour (works for backslash too), so that Name will be correctly encoded client side and decoded server side. Demis, is this something you might be interested in taking a look at?

BTW this works fine out-of-the-box with Java Jersey.....

Answer 3

I am encountering the same problem. My string is not a complex object. Just a string with a slash in it. It seems like ServiceStack is in fact receiving the URL encoded string correctly. Servicestack then appears to be decoding the URL encoded string before it passes it to routing (this is just a guess on my part) , instead of using the Route information in the request DTO to first determine which part of the URL is routing and which part is a parameter, then routing, then decoding the URL encoded parameter. I receive an error from service stack like so:

Handler for Request not found (404):

  Request.HttpMethod: GET
  Request.PathInfo: /QuoteFeed/GetQuote/ACO/X CN
  Request.QueryString: 
  Request.RawUrl: /QuoteFeed/GetQuote/ACO%2FX%20CN

Request is defined as follows:

[Route("/QuoteFeed/GetQuote/{Symbol}", Summary = "Retreive a price quote for the requested symbol.")]
public class GetQuote : IReturn<QuoteDataResponse>
{
    [DataMember, ProtoMember(1)]
    [ApiMember(Name = "Symbol",
         Description = "The symbol, in the providers given format, for which a quote should be given.",
         DataType = "string",
         IsRequired = true)]
    public string Symbol { get; set; } 
}

Seems fragile to require the client to replace slashes with some other special character which the service would swap back to a slash. Is the only way around this to force the request through POST?

Edit 1

This is my best attempt at getting this to work:

On the client side:

dim client = new JsonServiceClient (My.Settings.MarketDataServiceUri)
dim request = New GetQuote
request.Symbol =  WebUtility.UrlEncode(txtBoxSymbol.Text.ToUpperInvariant)

On the server side (in AppHost.Init):

base.RequestBinders.Add(typeof(GetQuote), httpReq =>
{
    var requestPath = string.Empty;
    if (typeof(GetQuote).GetCustomAttributes(typeof(RouteAttribute), true
                                     ).FirstOrDefault() is RouteAttribute dnAttribute)
    {
        requestPath = dnAttribute.Path;
    }

    var routePath = requestPath;
    var paramIndex = requestPath.IndexOf("{");
    if (paramIndex > 0)
    {
        routePath = requestPath.Substring(0, paramIndex);
    }

    return new GetQuote
    {
        Symbol = WebUtility.UrlDecode(httpReq.PathInfo.Replace(routePath, string.Empty))
    };
});

This is really ugly, but I can't find any other way around this. The symbol being passed in must have the slashes since that is the format required by the downstream quote provider and is what the users expect to enter. Is this the best way to do this?