java.lang.IllegalArgumentException for url embedded with special character

Question

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Illegal character in query at index 49: http://download.finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=?^NDX,^BANK&f=nsl1opc1

im getting the malformed url exception on the 'caret' (^) symbol..came to know that the caret is used heavily in regex and in other cases this character is particularly removed from a desired string.

Is this not possible to have strings/urls with 'caret' (^) symbol

In the above case to retrieve index data i need to have that symbol..

Maybe you should encode the character. The code for caret is %5E. — mwerschy
– mwerschy, Commented May 26, 2013 at 18:27
try encoding the url stackoverflow.com/questions/3286067/url-encoding-in-android — Raghunandan
– Raghunandan, Commented May 26, 2013 at 18:27

fge · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-26 18:31:49Z

2

It is indeed not legal to have a caret in a query string part.

Use the constructor for URI instead:

final URL url = new URI("http", "download.finance.yahoo.com", "/d/quotes.csv",
    "s=?^NDX,^BANK&f=nsl1opc1", null).toURL();

This will take care of all the necessary encoding issues for you.

See the Javadoc.

answered May 26, 2013 at 18:31

fge

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2 Comments

fge Over a year ago

Well, there is no reason why it should not work. Try it and see ;)

fge Over a year ago

Side note: if you have many URLs to build that way, one project of mine may be useful: github.com/fge/uri-template

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