AngularJS resource: how to disable url entity encoding

Update: with the new httpParamSerializer in Angular 1.4 you can do it by writing your own paramSerializer and setting $httpProvider.defaults.paramSerializer.

Below only applies to AngularJS 1.3 (and older).

It is not possible without changing the source of AngularJS.

This is done by $http:

https://github.com/angular/angular.js/tree/v1.3.0-rc.5/src/ng/http.js#L1057

function buildUrl(url, params) {
      if (!params) return url;
      var parts = [];
      forEachSorted(params, function(value, key) {
        if (value === null || isUndefined(value)) return;
        if (!isArray(value)) value = [value];

        forEach(value, function(v) {
          if (isObject(v)) {
            v = toJson(v);
          }
          parts.push(encodeUriQuery(key) + '=' +
                     encodeUriQuery(v));
        });
      });
      if(parts.length > 0) {
        url += ((url.indexOf('?') == -1) ? '?' : '&') + parts.join('&');
      }
      return url;
}

encodeUriQuery uses the standard encodeUriComponent (MDN) which replaces the '+' with '%2B'

Too bad you cannot overwrite encodeUriQuery because it is a local variable inside the angular function.

So the only option I see is to overwrite window.encodeURIComponent. I've done it in an $http interceptor to minimize the impact. Note that the original function is only put back when the response comes back, so this change is global (!!) while your request is ongoing. So be sure to test if this doesn't break something else in your application.

app.config(function($httpProvider) {
  $httpProvider.interceptors.push(function($q) {
    var realEncodeURIComponent = window.encodeURIComponent;
    return {
      'request': function(config) {
         window.encodeURIComponent = function(input) {
           return realEncodeURIComponent(input).split("%2B").join("+"); 
         }; 
         return config || $q.when(config);
      },
      'response': function(config) {
         window.encodeURIComponent = realEncodeURIComponent;
         return config || $q.when(config);
      }
    };
  });
});

AngularJS only runs the encodeUriQuery method if you pass your params as an extra object. If you manually create your own param string and concatenate it onto your URL then Angular won't modify it.

It's pretty simple to convert the param object yourself, here's an example: How to serialize a Object into a list of parameters?

While usually you don't want to do it (since on server side you can decode the request URI with a URL decode function to get back your plus signes) sometimes we want to "break" the rules.

Right now I can't actually test it (it would be helpful if you can create a jsfiddle with a test case for us to play with) but probably you should take a look at the transformRequest function of the resource object.

From the docs:

transformRequest – {function(data, headersGetter)|Array.} – transform function or an array of such functions. The transform function takes the http request body and headers and returns its transformed (typically serialized) version.

It looks like the $resource code wraps this functionality in Route.prototype.setUrlParams:

  params = params || {};
  forEach(self.urlParams, function (_, urlParam) {
    val = params.hasOwnProperty(urlParam) ? params[urlParam] : self.defaults[urlParam];
    if (angular.isDefined(val) && val !== null) {
      encodedVal = encodeUriSegment(val);
      url = url.replace(new RegExp(":" + urlParam + "(\\W|$)", "g"), function (match, p1) {
        return encodedVal + p1;
      });
    } else {
      url = url.replace(new RegExp("(\/?):" + urlParam + "(\\W|$)", "g"), function (match,
          leadingSlashes, tail) {
        if (tail.charAt(0) == '/') {
          return tail;
        } else {
          return leadingSlashes + tail;
        }
      });
    }
  });

Source

And it looks like the resourceFactory function creates a closure over the constructed route, so you don't have access to change this.

Do you specifically need this to be a resource object? If not, you can create a plain $http call and use a request transform as Antonio mentioned.