Producer URL writing question

[Subbu Allamaraju <subbu@bea.com>]

I have a question on URL-encoding needs of URL tokens during token 
replacement in URLs.

Let's say, a consumer sends a URL template of the following form:

http://foo.com/blah/blah?src={wsrp-url}&rw={wsrp-requiresRewrite}

The producer wants to substitute "http://bar.com/bar.gif"; for wsrp-url 
token, and "false" for wsrp-requiresRewrite, and so the resulting URL 
would look like

http://foo.com/blah/blah?src=http://bar.com/bar.gif&rw=false

Since this URL is not valid, the producer will have to URL encode the 
wsrp-url value, and the resulting URL will be

http://foo.com/blah/blah?src=http%3A%2F%2Fbar.com%2Fbar.gif&rw=false

However, the producer has no knowledge of whether (a) such encoding is 
required, and (b) such encoding would result in the resource being 
fetched correctly.

For example, consider the following URL template.

{wsrp-url}?rw=wsrp-requiresRewrite

In this case, if the producer decides to URL-encode wsrp-url value 
before substitution, just like it did above, it would result in a URL like

http%3A%2F%2Fbar.com%2Fbar.gif?rw=false

and the browser would fail to fetch the resource.

I presume similar issues occur with other parameters when URL templates 
are JavaScript based.

How should the producer determine when to URL-encode parameters?

Regards,
Subbu
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