URL considerations

The following considerations apply to specifying URLs in HTTP requests against a namespace. For considerations that apply specifically to naming new objects, see Object naming considerations.

URL length

For all HTTP methods except POST, the portion of a URL after rest, excluding any appended parameters, is limited to 4,095 bytes. If an HTTP request includes a URL that violates that limit, HCP returns an HTTP 414 (Request URI Too Large) error code.

URL character case

All elements of a URL except http[s] and the hostname are case sensitive.

Object names with non-ASCII, nonprintable characters

When you store an object or directory with non-ASCII, nonprintable characters in its name, those characters are percent-encoded in the name displayed back to you.

Regardless of how the name is displayed, the object or directory is stored with its original name, and you can access it either by its original name or by the name with the percent-encoded characters.

Percent-encoding for special characters

Some characters have special meaning when used in a URL and may be interpreted incorrectly when used for other purposes. To avoid ambiguity, percent-encode the special characters listed in the table below.

Character Percent-encoded value

Space

%20

Tab

%09

New line

%0A

Carriage return

%0D

+

%2B

%

%25

#

%23

?

%3F

&

%26

Percent-encoded values are not case sensitive.

Note: Do not percent-encode query parameters appended to URLs. For information on these parameters, see Specifying metadata on object creation.

Quotation marks with URLs in command lines

When using a command-line tool to access the namespace through HTTP, you work in a Unix, Mac OS® X, or Windows shell. Some characters in the commands you enter may have special meaning to the shell. For example, the ampersand (&) used in URLs to join multiple query parameters also often indicates that a process should be put in the background.

To avoid the possibility of the Unix, Mac OS X, or Windows shell misinterpreting special characters in a URL, always enclose the entire URL in double quotation marks.

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