Pages with special characters are not accessible via reverse proxy
Platform Notice: Data Center Only - This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Data Center platform.
Note that this KB was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center KBs for non-Data-Center-specific features may also work for Server versions of the product, however they have not been tested. Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.
*Except Fisheye and Crucible
Summary
Atlassian applications allow the use of reverse-proxies within our products, however Atlassian Support does not provide assistance for configuring them. Consequently, Atlassian can not guarantee providing any support for them.
Problem
Opening a page with a title that contains special characters leads to a system error. For example: [ABC] Hello
Environment
Confluence is configured with an Apache Reverse Proxy, an Apache Reverse Proxy Using the AJP Protocol OR NGINX.
Diagnosis
The following appears on the screen as well as in atlassian-confluence.log:
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Caused by: java.net.URISyntaxException: Illegal character in path at index 14: /display/<SPACEKEY>/[ABC]+HELLO
at java.net.URI$Parser.fail(URI.java:2848)
at java.net.URI$Parser.checkChars(URI.java:3021)
at java.net.URI$Parser.parseHierarchical(URI.java:3105)
at java.net.URI$Parser.parse(URI.java:3063)
at java.net.URI.<init>(URI.java:588)
at com.github.kristofa.brave.servlet.ServletHttpServerRequest.getUri(ServletHttpServerRequest.java:25)
... 49 moreCause
While the handling of special characters in the page title worked for the proxy configuration while running Confluence 5.8.x, the same configuration no longer works in version 5.10.x or higher.
Solution
Workaround
Apache Reverse Proxy Using the AJP Protocol
In the httpd.conf.local file, the following JkOption will most likely be present:
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JkOptions +ForwardKeySize +ForwardURICompat -ForwardDirectoriesThe +ForwardURICompat parameter needs to be changed for Confluence 5.10.x to +ForwardURICompatUnparsed. For example:
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JkOptions +ForwardKeySize +ForwardURICompatUnparsed -ForwardDirectoriesApache Reverse Proxy
For an Apache reverse proxy, ensure that the following is present:
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ProxyPass /confluence http://localhost:8090/confluence nocanonNGINX
For NGINX, simply edit the nginx.conf file by adding $request_uri; to the proxy_pass directive (as long as the location and context path are the same). For example:
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location /<context-path> {
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_pass http://<base-url>/<context-path>$request_uri;
}If this doesn't work or returns an error (we've seen some users receive 502 errors with the above change), then please use the following:
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location /<context-path> {
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
if ($request_uri ~* "/<context-path>(/.*)") {
proxy_pass http://<base-url>/<context-path>$1; break;
}
proxy_pass http://<base-url>/<context-path>;
}In all cases, the proxy will need to be restarted to pick up these changes.
⚠️ Note
Caveat: When the same Nginx is used by Jira, this configuration will affect Jira's configuration for the OAuth2 - Configure an outgoing link as the format of the Request is <Jira base URL>/rest/oauth2-client/latest/config/get-redirect-uri/?authorizationEndpoint=https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/v2.0/authorize
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