Decoding URI query string in Java

Question

I need to decode a URI that contains a query string; expected input/output behavior is something like the following:

abstract class URIParser
{       
    /*         


        

Answer 1

See class URLDecoder

Answer 2

Use

URLDecoder.decode(proxyRequestParam.replace("+", "%2B"), "UTF-8")
          .replace("%2B", "+")

to simulate decodeURIComponent. Java's URLDecoder decodes the plus sign to a space, which is not what you want, therefore you need the replace statements.

Warning: the .replace("%2B", "+") at the end will corrupt your data if the original (pre-x-www-form-urlencoded) contained that string, as @xehpuk pointed out.

Answer 3

var reqParam =  URLDecoder.decode(reqParam, "UTF-8")

Answer 4

Regarding the issue with the + sign :

I made a helper class that wraps the URLDecoder function based on the answer of @janb

import android.net.Uri;
import android.support.annotation.Nullable;
import android.text.TextUtils;

import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException;
import java.net.URLDecoder;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.Locale;

public class DateDecoder {

    private static final String KEY_DATE = "datekey";

    private static final SimpleDateFormat SIMPLE_DATE_FORMAT =
            new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZZZZZ", Locale.US);


    public static void main(String[] args) throws UnsupportedEncodingException {
        try {
            Uri uri = Uri.parse("http://asdf.com?something=12345&" +
                    KEY_DATE +"=2016-12-24T12:00:00+01:00");

            System.out.println("parsed date: " + DateDecoder.createDate(uri)); // parsed date: Sat Dec 24 12:00:00 GMT+01:00 2016
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    @Nullable
    public static Date createDate(@Nullable Uri data) {
        if (data != null) {
            try {
                String withPlus = decodeButKeepPlus(KEY_DATE, data.getEncodedQuery());
                if (!TextUtils.isEmpty(withPlus)) {
                    return SIMPLE_DATE_FORMAT.parse(withPlus);
                }
            } catch (Exception e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
        return null;
    }

    /**
     * copied from android.net.Uri.java
     */
    @Nullable
    public static String decodeButKeepPlus(String encodedKey, String completeEncodedQuery)
            throws UnsupportedEncodingException {

        final int length = completeEncodedQuery.length();
        int start = 0;
        do {
            int nextAmpersand = completeEncodedQuery.indexOf('&', start);
            int end = nextAmpersand != -1 ? nextAmpersand : length;

            int separator = completeEncodedQuery.indexOf('=', start);
            if (separator > end || separator == -1) {
                separator = end;
            }

            if (separator - start == encodedKey.length()
                    && completeEncodedQuery.regionMatches(start, encodedKey, 0, encodedKey.length())) {
                if (separator == end) {
                    return "";
                } else {
                    String encodedValue = completeEncodedQuery.substring(separator + 1, end);
                    if (!TextUtils.isEmpty(encodedValue)) {
                        return URLDecoder.decode(encodedValue.replace("+", "%2B"), "UTF-8").replace("%2B", "+");
                    }
                }
            }

            // Move start to end of name.
            if (nextAmpersand != -1) {
                start = nextAmpersand + 1;
            } else {
                break;
            }
        } while (true);
        return null;
    }

}

Answer 5

new java.net.URI(proxyRequestParam).getPath()

The string encoded by js encodeURIComponent should just be a path, without schema and other things. However it still a valid input for java.net.URI. So java.net.URI will do everything for us and then the path of it is what we want.