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 – Revvity Signals

Date Posted: 2019-04-05
Product: TIBCO Spotfire®

Problem:

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

Solution:

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:

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

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="[]"/>

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

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