I’m using the Discourse Affiliate plugin to add some params to URL. When the URL is used in plain text or in a link, everything is ok. But when it’s transformed in onebox, the & become & [תמונה] Do you know why?

So the URL will be valid? List of Validator errors and their explanation - Error Explanations for The W3C... Below are all the validator's error messages for which we have an "explanation". | W3C's easy-to-use markup validation service, based on SGML and XML parsers. This is usually a cascading error caused by a an undefined entity reference or use of an unencoded ampersand (&) in an URL or body text.

Whatever, it’s more readable if & are used instead of & I think… Is it a Onebox bug ?

When I click on it it’s still https://www.captaincontrat.com/articles-financement-societe/etapes-convention-actionnaires?utm_source=pragmatic&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=link in the browser (exemple here

That URL works for me. https://www.captaincontrat.com/articles-financement-societe/etapes-convention-actionnaires?utm_source=pragmatic&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=link The example “here” link however opens the Discourse app. I have a feeling this topic is more about the app than oneboxed?

We can see & instead of & in the URL now… [תמונה]

Yes, it can be confusing. Maybe you’ve had coding experience where backslash escapes needed to be backslash escaped themselves? This is similar. Because the ampersand that signals the beginning of an entity is an entity itself, it “doubles up”

Maybe you should URL encode the ampersands in a URL context? Percent-encoding Percent-encoding, also known as URL encoding, is a method to encode arbitrary data in a uniform resource identifier (URI) using only the US-ASCII characters legal within a URI. Percent-encoding is used to ensure special characters do not interfere with the URI's structure and interpretation. Special characters are replaced with a percent sign (%) followed by two hexadecimal digits representing the character's byte value. For example, a space is commonly encoded as %20: Although it is known as UR... & :arrow_right: %26

I think we actually fixed this @techAPJ?

Yes, this issue was fixed back in December 2017 via this commit… but we now have a much better and stable fix in place: https://github.com/discourse/onebox/commit/7a1885c48800693d9d4abfa9c58d6d25fd19ca65

In onebox, `&` become `&`

Product Support

Mittineague (Mittineague) 15 במרץ,‏ 2017,‏ 2:00pm 4

To me it isn’t a bug at all. The URL is being shown in the correct format.

נושא		תגובות	צפיות
Onebox links with ampersands don't encode correctly Bug	1	990	7 בספטמבר,‏ 2017
One Box url encoding of already encoded comma Bug	3	1232	27 ביוני,‏ 2019
Oneboxing changes link URL? Product Support	5	1027	24 ביולי,‏ 2023
Ampersand incorrectly encoded in onebox images Bug	12	1169	19 באוגוסט,‏ 2019
Discourse escaping & in Onebox Bug onebox	3	253	16 בינואר,‏ 2026

In onebox, `&` become `&amp;`

נושאים קשורים

In onebox, `&` become `&`