how to escape ampersand in query payload in IDE - bixby

Question

I have to add the following string to a restdb query:
&sort=_changed%26dir=-1
so it will look like this (which works in Postman):
{"identifier": "impeachmentsage"}&sort=_changed&dir=-1
I have tried several ways of escaping the &, including %26 and the ampersand character followed by amp; , but no matter what I get an error message complaining about the presence of the &. https://bixbydevelopers.com/dev/docs/reference/JavaScriptAPI/http#http-options
function getNewsByName(altBrainsNames, $vivContext) {
console.log('viv', $vivContext, altBrainsNames)
dashbot.logIncoming("Getting news by name", "GetNewsByName", $vivContext, altBrainsNames);
const url = properties.get("config", "baseUrl") + "content"
console.log("i got to restdb.js and the url is ", url);
console.log("AltBrainsNames is", altBrainsNames)
ampersand = "&"
const query = {
apikey: properties.get("secret", "apiKey"),
q: "{\"" + "identifier" + "\":\"" + altBrainsNames + "\"}" + ampersand+ "sort=_changed%26dir=-1"
}
console.log("query", query)
const options = {
format: "json",
query: query,
cacheTime: 0
}
Tried a couple of additional things.
var s = "sort=_changed%26dir=-1"
const query = {
apikey: properties.get("secret", "apiKey"),
q: "{\"" + "identifier" + "\":\"" + altBrainsNames + "\"}",
s: "sort=_changed%26dir=-1"
}
This gets closer and emits the ampersand, but the s= following it is extraneous.
UPDATE:
so I also tried constructing the complete URL and submitting it via the url parameter in getURL, bypassing the query option.
const url = properties.get("config", "baseUrl") + "content";
const q = "q={\"" + "identifier" + "\":\"" + altBrainsNames + "\"}";
const ampersand = encodeURIComponent("&");
submiturl = url + "\?" + q + ampersand + "sort=_changed" + ampersand + "dir=-1"
console.log('submit url is', submiturl)
const options = {
format: "json",
headers: {
'apikey': properties.get("secret", "apiKey"),
},
cacheTime: 0
}
console.log(options)
const response = http.getUrl(submiturl, options)
This produces a 400 error "unexpected & in JSON at column 32".
I now suspect that the fundamental problem is that getURL insists that the query string must be a matched key/value pair, while restdb's syntax provides for an unbalanced blank/value pair, i.e. &sort... rather than &s=sort. If this is the case, either getURL or restdb needs to change something...

Answer 1

Thanks so much to #rogerkibbe! Posting my final code here as there are one or two minor tweaks to get it in exactly the right format for restdb.
const url = properties.get("config", "baseUrl") + "content";
const q = "{\"" + "identifier" + "\":\"" + altBrainsNames + "\"}";
const options = {
format: "json",
headers: {
'apikey': properties.get("secret", "apiKey"),
},
query: {
q: q,
//identifier: "impeachmentsage",
sort: "_changed",
dir: -1,
//blank: "",
//withAmper: "hello&world"
},
cacheTime: 0
}

Answer 2

Your URL query parameters should just be a JSON object, "query" which is in the options object - Bixby will take care of all the escaping etc needed
For example:
let url = "https://postman-echo.com/get"
let options = {
format: 'json',
query: {
identifier: "impeachmentsage",
sorts: "_changed",
dir: -1,
blank: "",
withAmper: "hello&world"
}
};
let response = http.getUrl(url, options)
console.log ("response = " + JSON.stringify(response));
Results in the following URL being called
https://postman-echo.com/get?identifier=impeachmentsage&sorts=_changed&dir=-1&blank=&withAmper=hello%26world
I added "blank" as an example of passing an empty string/null and "withAmper" showing Bixby does any necessary escaping for you.
FYI - if you ever need to escape a URL, the build in Javascript encodeURI works well