Change Special Characters From Extracted Regex In Jmeter - regex

Question

I have extracted an API key and JMeter does not like the special characters with the extracted regex.
Below is an example
I used regular expression extractor to extract the data from the previous page.
The value extracted is: TEST|1TWO3-TEST
Error message
When using this value later I get the following message:
java.net.URISyntaxException: Illegal character in query at index 5: (URL+Regex)
at java.net.URI$Parser.fail(Unknown Source)
at java.net.URI$Parser.checkChars(Unknown Source)
at java.net.URI$Parser.parseHierarchical(Unknown Source)
at java.net.URI$Parser.parse(Unknown Source)
at java.net.URI.<init>(Unknown Source)
at java.net.URL.toURI(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.jmeter.protocol.http.sampler.HTTPHC4Impl.sample(HTTPHC4Impl.java:286)
at org.apache.jmeter.protocol.http.sampler.HTTPSamplerProxy.sample(HTTPSamplerProxy.java:74)
at org.apache.jmeter.protocol.http.sampler.HTTPSamplerBase.sample(HTTPSamplerBase.java:1146)
at org.apache.jmeter.protocol.http.sampler.HTTPSamplerBase.sample(HTTPSamplerBase.java:1135)
at org.apache.jmeter.threads.JMeterThread.process_sampler(JMeterThread.java:434)
at org.apache.jmeter.threads.JMeterThread.run(JMeterThread.java:261)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
Hard Coded Value
When hard coding the value it like it works fine: TEST%7C1TWO3-TEST
Any advice regards how I can get the regex to look like my hard coded value via regular expression extractor?

Answer 1

You need to url encode the parameter.
In HTTP Request , ensure you check "Encode ?" in the parameters table:
If the parameter is in path, you can move it in table for GET requests.
If you end up needing to code, then use JSR 223 Post Processor after your extractor, check Cache script and add if your regexp extractor creates varName for example:
import java.net.URLEncoder;
String value = URLEncoder.encode(vars["varName"], "UTF-8");
vars.put("ENCODE_VALUE", value);
You can then use the variable through ${ENCODE_VALUE}

Answer 2

Your error isn't in the regex but afterwords in how you are using the data. After the value is extracted using regex, make sure you encode the data like this:
String q = "TEST|1TWO3-TEST";
String url = URLEncoder.encode(q, "UTF-8");
Now you can use url for whatever operation you were doing. I've assumed that you have already extracted TEST|1TWO3-TEST into a variable.
Test
// Output: TEST%7C1TWO3-TEST

Answer 3

Just wrap your variable coming from the Regular Expression Extractor with urlEncode() function like:
${__urlencode(${foo})}
Demo:
Check out How to Use JMeter Functions articles series for more information on using functions in JMeter tests.
There are also few useful ones available via JMeter Plugins project.

Answer 4

Thanks for your replies, I did the following at it worked.
String var1 = vars.get("var1");
String newVar1 = var1.replaceAll("\\|","%7C");
vars.put("var1", newVar1);
Thanks