Escape-Unescape a return URL | XM Community
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Hello everyone, I am a non CS person trying to sort the following out : - I am working with an external provider who wants me to re-route people as follow: 1) They pass the following parameter to me through the url : &return 2) this parameter is in "escaped" format, for example: https%3A//qcsurveys.gfksay.com/mriweb/mriweb.dll%3FI.Engine%3Dengine1%26I.Project%3DS21937%26I.Session%3Did2pldaovuievnhi4a6nrai5o3gaaaaa%26I.SavePoint%3DSTATUS%26I.Renderer%3DHTMLPlayer Qualtrics seems to have a built in functionality such that this parameter is not saved as such but is partly (? - again I am not a CS person 😀 ) "unescaped" and thus saved as such: https://qcsurveys.gfksay.com/mriweb/mriweb.dl?I.Engine=engine1&I.Project=S21937&I.Session=id2pldaovuievnhi4a6nrai5o3gaaaaa&I.SavePoint=STATUS&I.Renderer=HTMLPlayer Which is good in that I can directly used this saved parameter as a redirect link, but not good if I have to pass this parameter on to an external website. Indeed, when I try to do this, anything after the first & is dropped. & appears to be "&" in html...My guess is that I need to "escape" this parameter so I can pass it on through a URL. Yet, the presence of amp; is making it not very straightforward for a non CS person like me googling this... Anyone as a suggestion what java code I should be using? After 4h of trying to problem solve I am starting to lose hope :neutral: Thanks! Charlotte
the HTML code for "&" is "&" (without double quote). to escape "&" in URL, please refer this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16622504/escaping-ampersand-in-url
JavaScript to re-encode the url: ``` Qualtrics.SurveyEngine.setEmbeddedData("newurl", encodeURIComponent("${e://Field/orgurl}"); ``` Then pipe ${e://Field/newurl} as the url parameter value in your redirect url.
Thanks everyone for suggesting solutions: My post was a little confusing. Let me try one last time: 1) The url is encoded: i.e. & are replaced by %3B (I cannot past the encoded version as it gets "de-coded" automatically on this discussion board (I wish I had taken CS courses in undergrad!) 2) qualtrics automatically decodes it: https://qcsurveys.gfksay.com/mriweb/mriweb.dll?I.Engine=engine1&I.Project=S21937&I.Session=1nfiu3l655iu4bza1hn52qvoqqaqaaaa&I.SavePoint=STATUS&I.Renderer=HTMLPlayer and saves it as such. This parameter is called "return". When I download the data, in the return column, I get the above. 3) I thus need to encode it again to pass it on. tomG suggested very helpful code. a) I generate a new empty embedded parameter : return_url b) and then add the following javascript code 😀 Qualtrics.SurveyEngine.addOnload(function() { /*Place your JavaScript here to run when the page loads*/ Qualtrics.SurveyEngine.setEmbeddedData("return_url", encodeURIComponent("${e://Field/return)")); }); But it is not working -> it does not populate the return_url parameter. I have no clue what I am doing wrong.
@cc1933, Define the return_url embedded data variable at the beginning of your survey flow. ! Then after the block where your JavaScript runs, pipe it into your url: `https://yourdomain.com/page.php?parm1=x&return=${e://Field/return_url}`
@TomG the issue is that the javacode --or something else I am not understanding-- does not "populate" return_url. Anyways. I found another solution that does not require decoding and encoding a URL. Thanks for the input though, very grateful that you took the time!
Ah, I see the problem now. It looks like you have a `)` instead of a `}` at the end of ${e://Field/return} in your JavaScript.
it works! @TomG thank you! (and my bad for not catching this). Now that I have worked out another solution, I mostly get the intellectual satisfaction of seeing it work and you get my eternal gratitude! (a developer told me that passing a long URL like that would not be a good idea, in his words: " if you pass in a whole long url as a parameter, the url won't work because its too long. i think this might be a big risk", I have thus defaulted to extracting the parameters from the URL and passing that along.) [For others and future references, just adding these tags: GfK, Knowledge Panel™]
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