Earlier today I asked this question about an url encoding problem.
I was trying to encode url query params with spring's UriComponentBuilder, then I also tried apache commons' UriBuilder. Both encode a plus sign (+) within a query param as %2B, but according to the specification RFC3986 (Section 3.4), a plus sign is permitted in the query params. Not permitted are only:
*( pchar / "/" / "?" )
So this would be a valid url
http://www.example.com?foo=bar+baz
But both libraries convert the +:
http://www.example.com?foo=bar%2Bbaz
I never heard of that before and assumed that a + is in fact an encoded whitespace character. In addition, this answer states that at least spring follows that spec.
Who is right? The specification, or spring and apache? Or do I simply misunderstand something? Or which specification is followed by those libs?
Sidenote
I would even consider it bad practice to not allow and not parse the encoded character server side, would you agree?