[Breaking Change] Decoding URI Before Evaluation in Expressions

Hey Bubblers,

We are about to release a new breaking change that affects the way we handle URI paths that contain spaces or special characters in our expression evaluations.

Currently, if you utilize an expression that checks for a URI path (Get path from page URL), and that path contains spaces or special characters, Bubble will check for the encoded literal version of the special character. This is the case even if that path was set from a type in your database. The new version will properly decode that path, so that you can more easily compare paths in URLs to data type names with special characters.

Example of how this change applies to bubble apps:

If you have enabled data API on your apps, and have URLs accessing data whose name may have spaces or special characters, you will see that the query does not yield the corresponding result when trying to access that data with the expression “Get path from page URL”,

Screen Shot 2020-12-03 at 11.33.17 AM

This is because we encode special characters in URIs, and the search pictured above is looking for the literal ‘%20’ instead of the decoded space. The conversion chart for that can be observed here: (HTML URL Encoding Reference)

With the upcoming version 11, we will be decoding paths and path segments before evaluating, so that URIs containing spaces, Cyrillic characters, or special characters can properly be digested in our expressions. The result for the same example above would yield the following result, able to digest the encoded ‘%20’ and access the actual data type match:

Screen Shot 2020-12-03 at 11.42.03 AM

Since this change affects a core aspect of how we evaluate expressions, we wanted to be extra cautious that you do not see any surprising changes in your apps. We realize that some Bubble apps may already be using workarounds to digest these characters in paths themselves. If so, we encourage you to try out both your current Bubble version and version 11, observe the changes, and remove any workarounds if applicable.

Thanks and of course don’t hesitate to comment or ask any questions!

9 Likes

Thanks @miri, that could prove helpful. When will this be released?

(btw: how can I keep track of (upcoming) changes in bubble)

Was it implement? Does it work on server-side workflows?

Sorry for the super late follow up on this. This rollout has actually been held up due to concerns on the code side, we will follow up with an update once this is ready to be deployed. The new version will be a different number than noted above, we will make sure that’s clarified when ready.

Sorry again and thanks for your patience!

1 Like

I thought it was already live.

When is it going to be available?

Thanks.

Hello @miri,

When this feature is going to be available?

Thanks.

Is this available now?

I have a problem with decoding special characters in image files. (AWS S3 → Imgix → bubble)
@miri Do you recommend implementing a workaround to avoid this issue?

Just came across this problem in my app. Any updates if this will ever be implemented?