After upgrading to TIBCO Spotfire 7.14 or higher, previously saved working analysis URLs may fail to open if it contains the special characters " < > [ \ ] ^ `{ | } in its path

After upgrading to TIBCO Spotfire 7.14 or higher, previously saved working analysis URLs may fail to open if it contains the special characters " < > [ \ ] ^ `{ | } in its path

After upgrading from earlier Spotfire versions to 7.14 or higher, a previously saved working analysis URL may fail to open if it contains special characters like " < > [ \ ] ^ `{ | } in its path.

For example, if you are using Spotfire version 7.13 or lower and your Spotfire library has a folder with square brackets like "[Public]/abc/xyz/" resulting in a bookmarked URL like https://spotfire.com/spotfire/wp/analysis?file=/[Public]/abc/xyz/analysis then the URL will fail to open in the browser after upgrading to 7.14 or higher. This is due to a change in Tomcat, restricting the following characters in URL path and URL filters: " < > [ \ ] ^ `{ | }. Once you upgrade to Spotfire versions 7.14 or higher, those special characters must be encoded. The TIBCO Spotfire Server encodes the brackets automatically, but any previously saved bookmark URLs like:

• https://spotfire.com/spotfire/wp/analysis?file=/[Public]/abc/xyz/analysis 

Would need to be changed to:

• https://spotfire.com/spotfire/wp/analysis?file=/%BPublic%5D/abc/xyz/analysis.

Besides manually updating any bookmarked URLs, you can also systematically resolve this with the following steps:

1. Edit the file <Tibco Spotfire Server installation directory>\tomcat\conf\server.xml
2. In the HTTP connector section corresponding to TSS used port (like <Connector port="80"), add the configuration parameter:

   relaxedQueryChars="<special characters>"

   Example:

   relaxedQueryChars="[]"

3. After editing, it should look like (for example):

   <Connector port="80"
                  maxHttpHeaderSize="65536"
                  connectionTimeout="30000"
                  enableLookups="false"
                  URIEncoding="UTF-8"
                  disableUploadTimeout="true"
                  server="TIBCO Spotfire Server"
                  compression="on"
                  compressableMimeType="text/html,text/xml,text/plain,text/css,application/json,application/javascript,image/svg+xml,application/xml"
                  acceptorThreadCount="2"
                  keepAliveTimeout="30000"
                  maxKeepAliveRequests="-1"
                  maxThreads="2000" 
                  relaxedQueryChars="<special characters>"/>

   Or:

   <Connector port="80"
                  maxHttpHeaderSize="65536"
                  connectionTimeout="30000"
                  enableLookups="false"
                  URIEncoding="UTF-8"
                  disableUploadTimeout="true"
                  server="TIBCO Spotfire Server"
                  compression="on"
                  compressableMimeType="text/html,text/xml,text/plain,text/css,application/json,application/javascript,image/svg+xml,application/xml"
                  acceptorThreadCount="2"
                  keepAliveTimeout="30000"
                  maxKeepAliveRequests="-1"
                  maxThreads="2000" 
                  relaxedQueryChars="[]"/>

4.  Save the server.xml file and restart the TIBCO Spotfire Server.

External: The HTTP Connector > relaxedQueryChars

• https://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-8.5-doc/config/http.html

Doc: Server.xml file

• https://docs.tibco.com/pub/spotfire_server/7.11.1/doc/html/TIB_sfire_server_tsas_admin_help/GUID-B6673242-CEEF-424A-B566-8DB8E834F856.html