1509452 - Firefox beautifies but not re-escapes invalid url characters like curly braces

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Address Bar, enhancement, P3)

Description

[svschouw]

+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #504310 +++

This is a clone of Bug #504310 and related to Bug #479145. The combination makes it especially unworkable.

If I follow an URL like
  http://www.example.com/?q=%7Bx%7D
it is beautified in the address bar to
  http://www.example.com/?q={x}

If I then edit the URL to
  http://www.example.com/?q={y}
then what is sent to the server is
  GET /?q={y}

However, the curly braces are invalid URL characters and servers like Tomcat will block those requests by default. This makes working with JSON in URLs especially bothersome, since you can't quickly edit the url.

More information can be found in the description of Bug #504310

Bug #504310 was closed as a duplicate of Bug #479145, however, I don't think it is a duplicate, since Bug #479145 is about the beautifying of the characters, which I don't mind, since it helps url readability. And Bug #504310 is about the failure to escape curly braces, which wouldn't be so bad in itself if it wasn't for Bug #479145.

Comment 1

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

It sounds similar to bug 1163959, with the difference braces are indeed considered "unsafe" characters in urls.
Unfortunately while I think this should be addressed, I'm not sure when someone may have time to go through it.