How to prevent WCF-WebHttp Send Port from encoding a space in query parameter to a plus sign

Randy Lindsey 96 Reputation points
2021-06-09T23:20:30.98+00:00

I am calling a REST API in a commercial-off-the-shelf application to search for customers by phone number. These phone numbers are formatted like this: "(888) 888-8888"

My problem is the space " " after the right parenthesis. The BizTalk 2013 R2 WCF-WebHttp adapter seems to encode the URL after I build it, and it replaces the space with a plus sign "+". The COTS application does not decode this back to space, so my search always fails.

If I call the COTS application from a REST request using SoapUI it encodes the space as "%20" and the COTS app decodes this properly and returns the result.

I am using WCF-WebHttp Transport Properties URL Mapping to substitute the phone number from the message into the URL. Excerpt:
Method="GET" Url="/search?q={PHONENUMBER}&skip=0&take=1000"

I've tried substituting the space in the phone number with the following, but here is the result for each trial (as logged by a test IIS web site):

  1. Sent (097) 579-8888, end result was (097)+579-8888
  2. Sent (097)+579-8888, end result was (097)%2b579-8888
  3. Sent (097)%20579-8888, end result was (097)%2520579-8888
  4. Send (097) 579-8888, end result was (097)%26nbsp%3b579-8888

How can I prevent the WCF-WebHttp adapter from encoding my URL? I will take responsibility for encoding it myself.

Microsoft BizTalk Server
Microsoft BizTalk Server
A family of Microsoft server products that support large-scale implementation management of enterprise application integration processes.
358 questions
.NET
.NET
Microsoft Technologies based on the .NET software framework.
3,573 questions
Accepted answer
  1. Randy Lindsey 96 Reputation points
    2021-06-23T14:45:55.617+00:00

    I'm using BizTalk 2013 R2. There was no additional helpful information in the WCF-WebHttp Adapter link posted above. I had already tried everything suggested there and elsewhere.

    To follow up, ultimately what I did was to create a dynamic send port rather than using a static send port as I initially tried.

    First I manually encoded my output parameter to replace any spaces with the web standard "%20".

    In a Message Assignment shape I set various properties on the outgoing message to configure the dynamic send. I pulled certain values from the ESSO database so they can be configured at runtime:
    MsgMyAppCustSearchRequest(WCF.HttpMethodAndUrl) = "GET";
    MsgMyAppCustSearchRequest(WCF.HttpHeaders) =
    XXX.Common.Helpers.SSOInterface.SSOInterface.Read("YYY.MyAppAdapter", "HttpHeaderContent") +
    System.Environment.NewLine +
    XXX.Common.Helpers.SSOInterface.SSOInterface.Read("YYY.MyAppAdapter", "HttpHeaderAuthorization");
    MsgMyAppCustSearchRequest(WCF.SuppressMessageBodyForHttpVerbs) = "GET";
    // Security is set later in a separate Decide shape
    MsgMyAppCustSearchRequest(BTS.SendPipelineResponseConfig) =
    "<Root xmlns:xsd='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema' xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance'><Stages><Stage CategoryId='9d0e4103-4cce-4536-83fa-4a5040674ad6'><Components><Component Name='Microsoft.BizTalk.Component.JsonDecoder'><Properties><RootNode vt='8'>Root</RootNode><RootNodeNamespace vt='8'>http://XXX.YYY.MyAppAdapter.MyApp_CustSearchResponse_JSON</RootNodeNamespace></Properties></Component><Component Name='Microsoft.BizTalk.Component.XmlDasmComp'><Properties><AllowUnrecognizedMessage vt='11'>-1</AllowUnrecognizedMessage></Properties></Component></Components></Stage></Stages></Root>";
    MsgMyAppCustSearchRequest(WCF.VariablePropertyMapping) = System.String.Empty;
    MsgMyAppCustSearchRequest(BTS.RetryCount) = 0;
    MsgMyAppCustSearchRequest(WCF.MaxReceivedMessageSize) = 200000;
    MsgMyAppCustSearchRequest(WCF.OpenTimeout) = "00:01:00";
    MsgMyAppCustSearchRequest(WCF.CloseTimeout) = "00:01:00";
    MsgMyAppCustSearchRequest(WCF.SendTimeout) = "00:01:00";
    MsgMyAppCustSearchRequest(BTS.LRPMsgBodyTracking) = 1; // you could parameterize or use other message tracking settings

    Since you can't use If-Then-Else in a Message Assignment shape, separately I set other properties depending on whether we were using https or http:
    MsgMyAppCustSearchRequest2 = MsgMyAppCustSearchRequest;
    MsgMyAppCustSearchRequest2(WCF.SecurityMode) = "Transport"; // or "None" for http

    Finally I set some dynamic send port properties in an Expression shape, including crucially the properly encoded URL:
    Dynamic_Send_MyApp_CustomerSearchByPhone(Microsoft.XLANGs.BaseTypes.Address) =
    XXX.Common.Helpers.SSOInterface.SSOInterface.Read("YYY.MyAppAdapter", "ServerURL") +
    XXX.Common.Helpers.SSOInterface.SSOInterface.Read("YYY.MyAppAdapter", "OperationGetCustomerSearch") +
    "?q=" + MsgMyAppCustSearchRequest2(phoneNumber) +
    "&skip=0&take=2"; // Hopefully we only ever get one, but by allowing 2 we can debug if we do get multiples
    Dynamic_Send_MyApp_CustomerSearchByPhone(Microsoft.XLANGs.BaseTypes.TransportType) = "WCF-WebHttp";

    You can configure the Send and Receive Pipelines on the Port shape.

    This works. Seems silly that I had to do all this in order to gain control over the URL encoding of my parameter.

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