How to Get Unicode 'non-ASCII' Characters in HTTPS URL to Appear Correctly
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
Symptoms
In most cases URLs running over HTTP work fine, but not when using HTTPS (i.e. over SSL). This usually results in Unicode (non-ASCII) characters in an HTTPS URL appearing incorrect in the URL, and the served page containing numerous errors.
Cause
This occurs when the useBodyEncodingForURI="true" flag is not defined in the HTTPS connector definition in conf/server.xml of the Apache Tomcat application server running JIRA. This flag is set as such by default in 'recommended' distribution installations of JIRA, however, in JIRA WAR setups, this might not be the case.
Resolution
Ensure that the
useBodyEncodingForURI="true"flag is included in the following element of theconf/server.xmlfile of your Apache Tomcat installation running JIRA. This forces the encoding to match the encoding of the request, which should be in UTF-8:1 2 3 4 5 6<Connector port="8443" protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192" SSLEnabled="true" maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" enableLookups="false" disableUploadTimeout="true" acceptCount="100" scheme="https" secure="true" clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS" useBodyEncodingForURI="true"/>Alternatively you can set the flag
URIEncoding="UTF-8", which will set the default URL encoding to UTF-8:1 2 3 4 5 6<Connector port="8443" protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192" SSLEnabled="true" maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" enableLookups="false" disableUploadTimeout="true" acceptCount="100" scheme="https" secure="true" clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS" URIEncoding="UTF-8"/>
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