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Niraj466
Helper II
Helper II

Escape special character '&' (ampersand)

Hello,

I do have value with special character ('&').

Value : 'D&E_Transactions'

 

I'm using action : 'Invoke web service" parsing the above value. 

Niraj466_0-1663304736952.png

As the '&' symbol within the value is considered as special character, it is generating status code 400 with webservice response as long HTML format error.

How can I escape '&' to parse here?

I already tried with the action 'Escape text for regular expression'  and action 'Replace text' by '&'. But none of these are working.

 

7 REPLIES 7
Expiscornovus
Most Valuable Professional
Most Valuable Professional

Hi @Niraj466,

 

I have seen some people suggesting that you need to encode it twice when interacting with the Web API. Haven't tried it myself but it is worth a shot, right?

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Apps-Ideas/WebAPI-retrieveMultiple-with-special-characters...

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9292865/what-is-url-encoding-2526

 

Can you try the below instead of the ampersand to see if that works?

%2526

 



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Pavel_NaNoi
Impactful Individual
Impactful Individual

you can escape a character by putting %'s & double-quotes around it, e.g. %"&"% for things like this.

Thanks @Pavel_NaNoi .

I tried the syntex you suggested here.

 

Niraj466_0-1663388484981.png

It is still throwing 404 error either with single quotes/double quotes.

 

Thank you @Expiscornovus .

 

I tried with '%2526', but it also doesn't work.

Niraj466_1-1663388915321.png

I used %% to escape single % which gave syntax error.

I also tried by applying '%' at both the side.

Niraj466_2-1663389200243.png

Tried with single encoded too as suggested in above blog.

Niraj466_3-1663389535331.png

 

 

Nothing is working here. I'm not sure which syntax should work here.

 

Just to clarify, api call is working perfectly for the case without special character like '&'.

 

Kresimir_RPA
Advocate IV
Advocate IV

Have you tried to set the whole url into variable and then passing it into Invoke Url section as one variable?

@Kresimir_RPA 

Yes, I tried now all above scenarios by storing value as NewVar using Set variable and passing it to Invoke Url.

Niraj466_0-1663418162720.png

 

But still not expected output.

 

I'm getting error as below : 

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Runtime Error</title>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" />
<style>
body {font-family:"Verdana";font-weight:normal;font-size: .7em;color:black;}
p {font-family:"Verdana";font-weight:normal;color:black;margin-top: -5px}
b {font-family:"Verdana";font-weight:bold;color:black;margin-top: -5px}
H1 { font-family:"Verdana";font-weight:normal;font-size:18pt;color:red }
H2 { font-family:"Verdana";font-weight:normal;font-size:14pt;color:maroon }
pre {font-family:"Consolas","Lucida Console",Monospace;font-size:11pt;margin:0;padding:0.5em;line-height:14pt}
.marker {font-weight: bold; color: black;text-decoration: none;}
.version {color: gray;}
.error {margin-bottom: 10px;}
.expandable { text-decoration:underline; font-weight:bold; color:navy; cursor:pointer; }
@media screen and (max-width: 639px) {
pre { width: 440px; overflow: auto; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word; }
}
@media screen and (max-width: 479px) {
pre { width: 280px; }
}
</style>
</head>

<body bgcolor="white">

<span><H1>Server Error in '/' Application.<hr width=100% size=1 color=silver></H1>

<h2> <i>Runtime Error</i> </h2></span>

<font face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif ">

<b> Description: </b>An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.
<br><br>

<b>Details:</b> To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a &lt;customErrors&gt; tag within a &quot;web.config&quot; configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This &lt;customErrors&gt; tag should then have its &quot;mode&quot; attribute set to &quot;Off&quot;.<br><br>

<table width=100% bgcolor="#ffffcc">
<tr>
<td>
<code><pre>

&lt;!-- Web.Config Configuration File --&gt;

&lt;configuration&gt;
&lt;system.web&gt;
&lt;customErrors mode=&quot;Off&quot;/&gt;
&lt;/system.web&gt;
&lt;/configuration&gt;</pre> </code>

</td>
</tr>
</table>

<br>

<b>Notes:</b> The current error page you are seeing can be replaced by a custom error page by modifying the &quot;defaultRedirect&quot; attribute of the application&#39;s &lt;customErrors&gt; configuration tag to point to a custom error page URL.<br><br>

<table width=100% bgcolor="#ffffcc">
<tr>
<td>
<code><pre>

&lt;!-- Web.Config Configuration File --&gt;

&lt;configuration&gt;
&lt;system.web&gt;
&lt;customErrors mode=&quot;RemoteOnly&quot; defaultRedirect=&quot;mycustompage.htm&quot;/&gt;
&lt;/system.web&gt;
&lt;/configuration&gt;</pre> </code>

</td>
</tr>
</table>

<br>

</font>

</body>
</html>

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