I'd agree that a string and/or bytes value supplied as a query component would be the best solution. Let us shoot ourselves in our feet! In terms of a comprehensive url api, I think the argument would be that application/x-www-form-urlencoded query strings are the most common use case, but certainly are not a requirement for the query component in urls.
(In this particular case, I would also concur that the burden is on the web application to be able to handle form-urlencoded query strings, but I sympathize. In a past project, also at a major university, an authentication url required an unusually formatted "return url" format, where ampersands were replaced with dollar signs, but all else was left intact. This was an ad-hoc encoding, for sure, but since the authenticating side was much more restricted in terms of development agility, we were the ones who adapted...) On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 5:21 PM, Neil Van Dyke <n...@neilvandyke.org> wrote: > Even and I spoke offline, and although I don't have all the details (and > something sounds odd), it currently sounds like the core problem here is > that some server program (perhaps not stock Shibboleth itself) is unusually > non-compliant in its handling of URLs.[*] > > Although the problem here does not appear to be in Racket, it wouldn't hurt > to modify "net/url" to permit a verbatim HTTP request path and query > components to be specified as an optional string/bytes argument, separate > from the URL argument. (Alternatively, you could do less aggressive > "%"-encoding of the query and fragment parts of the URL than you do for the > path, although that risks breaking *different* broken server software. And > you shouldn't *have* to be less aggressive.) > > [*] I have implemented support for around a dozen different single-signon > Web authentication systems (lots of organizations do it differently, despite > SAML), incidental to my consulting practice, and usually I only run into > this kind of quirky behavior when dealing with HTTP proxies/firewalls, not > with IdPs or other authentication servers. > > > Neil > > ____________________ > Racket Users list: > http://lists.racket-lang.org/users -- Erik Pearson Adaptations ;; web form and function ____________________ Racket Users list: http://lists.racket-lang.org/users
