Invalid character found in the request target in spring boot

Question

My application is started with java -jar with version 1.5.6.RELEASE of spring boot.
The content of one of my request has the character \"{\".When it is sended to serve

Answer 1

you will start your Spring boot app like this

$ java -jar -Dtomcat.util.http.parser.HttpParser.requestTargetAllow=|{}
 demo-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar

or encode uri like this

document.location = restUrl + "/print?reportParams= " + encodeURI(JSON.stringify(jsonData));

Answer 2

Easy way just add this code in your main class

System.setProperty("tomcat.util.http.parser.HttpParser.requestTargetAllow", "{}");

Answer 3

According to https://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-8.5-doc/config/systemprops.html, requestTargetAllow is deprecated. For me, the other solutions presented here did not work either. According to the Tomcat documentation I found a way to set the property relaxedQueryChars instead:

@Bean
public ConfigurableServletWebServerFactory webServerFactory() {
    TomcatServletWebServerFactory factory = new TomcatServletWebServerFactory();
    factory.addConnectorCustomizers(new TomcatConnectorCustomizer() {
        @Override
        public void customize(Connector connector) {
            connector.setProperty("relaxedQueryChars", "|{}[]");
        }
    });
    return factory;
}

Answer 4

For SpringBoot 1.5.17.RELEASE. The below code worked for me.

@Configuration
public class ServerConfig {

    @Bean
    public EmbeddedServletContainerFactory webServerFactory() {
        TomcatEmbeddedServletContainerFactory factory = new TomcatEmbeddedServletContainerFactory();
        factory.addConnectorCustomizers(new TomcatConnectorCustomizer() {
            @Override
            public void customize(Connector connector) {
                connector.setProperty("relaxedQueryChars", "|{}[]");
            }
        });
        return factory;
    }

}

Answer 5

For a Spring Boot (2.3) application, just add to properties file:

server.tomcat.relaxed-query-chars=|,{,},[,]

There is also the following key: server.tomcat.relaxed-path-chars

Answer 6

Encode it to Base 64 string at request end and decode it at the controller end.

---

Encode

btoa(string)

---

Decode:

String arr = request.getParameter();
arr = new String(Base64.getDecoder().decode(arr))