How to escape [] in Karate?

Question

This is my request:

http://localhost:8080/rest/object/number/24/render?rendering=%5BREAR%5D

(where %5BREAR%5D means [REAR], but the [] symbols needed to be escaped in Postman.)

In Karate, this is how far I got:

Scenario Outline: GET Render Object (Front and Rear)
    * header Authorization = $authHeader
    Given url $baseUrl
    And path "/object/number/" + "24" + "/render"
    And param rendering = <render>
    When method GET
    Then status 200
    And match header Content-Type == 'image/svg+xml'

    Examples:
    | render       |
    | %5BREAR%5D   |
    | '%5BREAR%5D' |
    | "%5BREAR%5D" |

None of the examples worked, it always results in 500 request response code. When checking the URL used by Karate for the request:

http://localhost:9999/rest/object/number/24/render?rendering=%255BREAR%255D

That means that my original parameter %5BREAR%5D was modified to %255BREAR%255D.

Does anyone know how to fix that, to have the results I have on Postman (i.e., 200 response)? Thank you in advance.

You said the brackets have to be escaped in Postman, but it looks like Karate is escaping those strings for you (%25 is the URL encoding for %). Can you try it with the actual brackets in your examples instead of %5? — samuei, Aug 17 '23 at 14:34

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 17 '23 at 14:42

When you use param or path Karate will do the right thing for encoding, try this - and you can confirm it works because you can see what the server saw as the request (echoed in the response). You never know, if your server doesn't handle it - it can be considered a bug in your server implementation.

Scenario Outline:
  * url 'https://httpbin.org'
  * path 'anything'
  * param rendering = `[${render}]`
  * method get

  Examples:
  | render |
  | FOO    |
  | BAR    |

Note how Examples columns are auto-converted to proper variables.

Also refer similar questions: https://stackoverflow.com/a/59977660/143475

How to escape [] in Karate?

1 Answers1