Intuit IPP Rest API query string escape - api

Question

So, for the Intuit IPP Rest API,
Say if i want to query a customer who's name is ABC, i can use a http get request like this
https://qb.sbfinance.intuit.com/v3/company/198445012/query?query=select Id from Customer where FullyQualifiedName%3D'ABC'
&3D is a url escape of '=', this works without any problem.
Now if the customer's name is A&B, I tried the query string like this
select Id from Customer where FullyQualifiedName='A&B'
After the url encoding, it looks like this
https://qb.sbfinance.intuit.com/v3/company/198445012/query?query=select Id from Customer where FullyQualifiedName%3D'A%26B'
It will fail.
Any Idea?
Update
The above urls i copied from the IPP's API explorer.
Here is the code, I am using DevDefined.OAuth
IConsumerRequest conReq = _oSession.Request();
conReq = conReq.Get();
conReq.AcceptsType = "application/xml";
//conReq = conReq.ForUrl(string.Format(#"https://qb.sbfinance.intuit.com/v3/company/{0}/query?query={1}", Settings.Default.QuickBooksOnlineRealmId, #"select * from Customer where DisplayName='ABC'")); if use this line, it works fine
conReq = conReq.ForUrl(string.Format(#"https://qb.sbfinance.intuit.com/v3/company/{0}/query?query={1}", Settings.Default.QuickBooksOnlineRealmId, #"select * from Customer where DisplayName='A&B'"));
try
{
string str = conReq.ReadBody();
catch (Exception ex)
{
//ex.Message
}
the returned xml data like this
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<IntuitResponse xmlns="http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3" time="2014-03-20T06:24:12.408-07:00">
<Fault type="ValidationFault">
<Error code="4000">
<Message>Error parsing query</Message>
<Detail>QueryParserError: Invalid content. Lexical error at line 1, column 44. Encountered: <EOF> after : "\'A"</Detail>
</Error>
</Fault>
</IntuitResponse>
I am not 100% sure, yesterday when i test, it actually return something says the oauth failed. But this is what I got this morning.
Actually, you can try it within IPP's API explorer, it gives the same result.
The devdefined's code for ForUrl
public static IConsumerRequest ForUrl(this IConsumerRequest request, string url)
{
request.Context.RawUri = new Uri(url);
return request;
}
That will encode the url as
https://qb.sbfinance.intuit.com/v3/company/1122502005/query?query=select%20*%20from%20Customer%20where%20DisplayName='A&B'
Ok, finally, found the issue:
The real issue is Uri(url) won't escape the & in 'A&B' because it doesn't know if it is a url & or part of the data, So i changed the following line
conReq = conReq.ForUrl(string.Format(#"https://qb.sbfinance.intuit.com/v3/company/{0}/query?query={1}", Settings.Default.QuickBooksOnlineRealmId, #"select * from Customer where DisplayName='A&B'"));
as
conReq = conReq.ForUrl(string.Format(#"https://qb.sbfinance.intuit.com/v3/company/{0}/query?query={1}", Settings.Default.QuickBooksOnlineRealmId, Uri.EscapeDataString(#"select * from Customer where DisplayName='A&B'")));
use Uri.EscapeDataString to escape the data query string first.

Answer 1

If you create a customer with name 'A&B', then V3 service returns that customer object like below -
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<IntuitResponse xmlns="http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3" time="2014-03-20T01:54:46.834-07:00">
<Customer domain="QBO" sparse="false">
<Id>10</Id>
<SyncToken>0</SyncToken>
<MetaData>
<CreateTime>2014-03-20T01:54:46-07:00</CreateTime>
<LastUpdatedTime>2014-03-20T01:54:47-07:00</LastUpdatedTime>
</MetaData>
<FullyQualifiedName>A&B</FullyQualifiedName>
<DisplayName>A&B</DisplayName>
<PrintOnCheckName>A&B</PrintOnCheckName>
<Active>true</Active>
<Taxable>true</Taxable>
<Job>false</Job>
<BillWithParent>false</BillWithParent>
<Balance>100.00</Balance>
<BalanceWithJobs>100.00</BalanceWithJobs>
<PreferredDeliveryMethod>Email</PreferredDeliveryMethod>
</Customer>
</IntuitResponse>
To retrieve this object by name, you need to use the following query
SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE DisplayName = 'A&B'
But it needs to be url encoded like following
SELECT+*+FROM+Customer+WHERE+DisplayName+%3D+%27A%26B%27
Java code to achieve this -
Customer customer = GenerateQuery.createQueryEntity(Customer.class);
String query = select($(customer)).where($(customer.getDisplayName()).eq("A&B")).generate();
// Query output - SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE DisplayName = 'A&B'
String encodedUrl = URLEncoder.encode(query, "UTF-8");
It works perfectly. (Devkit handles all these pretty well )
Hope this answers your qts.
Thanks

Answer 2

Please see an example here to escape special chars-
using Intuit.Ipp.Core;
using Intuit.Ipp.Data;
using Intuit.Ipp.LinqExtender;
using Intuit.Ipp.QueryFilter;
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
static class SampleCalls
{
public static Customer QueryCustomerByDisplayName(ServiceContext context, string displayName) {
displayName = displayName.Replace("'", "\\'"); //Escape special characters
QueryService<Customer> customerQueryService = new QueryService<Customer>(context);
return customerQueryService.Where(m => m.DisplayName == displayName).FirstOrDefault();
}
}