CRM Api FetchXml replaces characters when using like - api

Question

I'm trying to call CRM Api to fetch contacts. The requirement says I can search by name using the LIKE operator.
I'm using the fetchxml below to query CRM:
<fetch version="1.0" output-format="xml-platform" mapping="logical" distinct="false">
<entity name="contact">
<attribute name="fullname" />
<filter type="and">
<condition attribute="statecode" operator="eq" value="0" />
</filter>
<filter type="and">
<condition attribute="fullname" operator="like" value="%ben%" />
</filter>
</entity>
</fetch>
The problem is: If I try with "test" for example, it works fine. But if I try to search for "ben" it doesn't. I believe the issue is related to encoding but I can't find a way to fix it. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Seems like encoding error in your code. Try to pass your encoded fetchxml query in the below url & test in the browser address bar. If it results the expected record(s) then it’s not platform problem.
https://<yourorg>.crm.dynamics.com/api/data/v8.2/contacts?fetchXml=encodedFetchXML
To use FetchXml, we need to format FetchXml in usable Web API service
endpoint format. We do this by storing the FetchXML in a variable and
encoding the string with the encodeURI function native to JavaScript as
below.
var encodedFetchXml = encodeURI(fetchContact);
Read more
Update:
I tested this. Both the below fetch filter worked & gave me the expected contact record in browser test.
<condition attribute="lastname" operator="like" value="%thiy%" />
<condition%20attribute="lastname"%20operator="like"%20value=%27%25thiy%25%27%20/>
Edit:
We faced this issue in our Production application today when users trying to search for %bernhard%, but we are handling in code with value="%%bbbernhard%" as a workaround.