Error connecting to Azure: Illegal character in password with mongoose 5.0.1 but works in 4.13.9

Question

I have a node.js application that is deployed to azure using CosmosDB and the MongoDB API. My application uses mongoose which works seamlessly in 4.13.9.

My application that works connects as follows:

var configDB = require('./config/database');
var mongoose = require('mongoose');
mongoose.connect(configDB.url, { useMongoClient: true } );
mongoose.Promise = global.Promise;
var db = mongoose.connection;
db.on('error', console.error.bind(console, 'MongoDB connection error:'));

the config/database file is defined as follows (changed username, password, DB to protect the innocent):

module.exports = {
    'url': 'mongodb://azureusername:[email protected]:10255/?ssl=true'
}

Now the problem comes when I install mongoose 5.0.1. I remove the useMongoClient option from the connect and got rid of the promise so my connect code is now:

mongoose.connect(configDB.url);
var db = mongoose.connection;
db.on('error', console.error.bind(console, 'MongoDB connection error:'));

When this runs I get the following in the console:

(node:21392) UnhandledPromiseRejectionWarning: Unhandled promise rejection (rejection id: 2): Error: Password contains an illegal unescaped character

I can even comment out the connection code to where it is only the mongoose.connect and that is what is giving the error. What am I doing wrong? Is there a breaking change in 5.0.1 that I need to account for? As a side note that may or may not be related, I saw some notes about now giving a callback instead of using promises so if someone has an example of how they do that in a Node/Express app that would be great, but it doesn't seem like that's the isee when I'm getting an error reported on the connect about an illegal character. NOTE: The config file is exactly the same when running against 4.13.9 or 5.0.1 so I know the password is valid and it is not the issue.

Answer 1

The password for the Azure Cosmos DB instance I got ended with ==, hence the illegal characters message. These characters must be urlencoded.

An equals sign = urlencoded is %3D.

A properly encoded connection string for the password jitsu== could look like mongodb://user:jitsu%3D%3D@localhost:27017/dbname?ssl=false.

Also be aware that the connection strings you get from the Cosmos DB blade in the Azure Portal doesn't include the database name.