JSON POST body URI encoded (RFC3986)

[chacal]

Due to pull request #1315 all POSTed JSON content is URI encoded in 2.52.1.

Is there some way to avoid this? The server I'm POSTing to does not expect JSON data to be encoded, but instead sent as is.

Anyhow, is it OK to encode JSON content at all as the format itself allows the usage of e.g. '!' and '*' without any encoding? {"key": "value !"} is a very different JSON than {"key": "value %21"}

[nylen]

Thanks for reporting, I agree that we should not pass JSON POST bodies through rfc3986. @simov want to take a look so we can release a fixed version quickly?

[simov]

That was the reason why I proposed this change as an option (first commit). If Twitter allows json post bodies (not sure) then there it should be rfc3986 encoded. So what's the expected behavior exactly?

[nylen]

Encoding regular application/x-www-form-urlencoded POST bodies is transparent: if we encode too much, the server will decode it.

I didn't think about this until now, but encoding JSON in this way is not transparent. I'd be surprised if there were any servers that will also URL-decode while decoding JSON.

Propose deleting this line, let me know what you think.

[simov]

OK, I'll take a look, and submit PR (the tests should be changed a bit)

[chacal]

Shouldn't the encoding be removed also on line 1439? There we are setting JSON request body as well, I believe.

[simov]

I'm just looking at it :)

[nylen]

Version 2.53.0 is on npm with this fix.

[chacal]

Thanks for the very fast response on this! Version 2.53.0 works like a charm! :)

[nylen]

glad to hear it, that was a nasty bug 😓

[crobinson42]

Hey @chacal @nylen I'm running into this using request to post to github using the github api. It's encoding my JSON and I can't seem to understand a way around it. Any help?

I send this { "title": "Test Bug Title..Kaboom!"} and github receives this { "title": "Test Bug Title..Kaboom%21" }

request
                .post({
                    url: "https://api.github.com/repos/crobinson42/therms-public/issues",
                    form: JSON.stringify(githubIssueObj),
                    headers: {
                        'User-Agent': 'App Auto Bug Filing',
                        'Authorization': 'Basic yaDaYadA...YadaYada',
                        'Content-type': 'application/json; charset=utf-8'
                    }
                },...

Using v2.74.0

Thanks!

[simov]

@crobinson42 you are not supposed to send URL encoded JSON. If you really do need to send JSON then use the json option instead. For URL encoded body pass a regular object to the form option (without JSON.stringify).

[crobinson42]

@simov Ahh, THANK you for pointing that out! I added the option flag json:true and moved my JSON to the body: myJSON instead of form: myJSON and that did the trick.

request.post({
  url: "my url...",
  json: true,
  body: myJSON
});