Play framework parsing semicolons in query parameters

Question

I am refactoring a project to use Play Framework instead of Scalatra, and am running into trouble with query parameters containing semicolons, e.g. /url?filter=filter1:val1;filter2:val2 gets mapped to filter = "filter1:val1;filter2:val2" in Scalatra, but gets mapped to filter = "filter1:val1" in Play Framework. The only solution I've found, Escape semicolon route playframework 2.0.2, suggests using a regex to capture the entire parameter, but this appears to only be applicable to path parameters and not to query parameters - one of my requirements is that I can't change the way that the front end calls the api, i.e. I can't change a query parameter into a path parameter.

How can I tell Play not to parse out the semicolons in query parameters, i.e. to return "filter1;filter2" instead of "filter1"?

I can manually parse out the query parameters using a regex on "request.rawQueryString", but I'd rather avoid this if possible.

Answer 1

The solution we went with was to parse out the query parameters using an implicit class, which wasn't as onerous as I thought it would be

implicit class ParsedRawQueryString[+T](req: Request[T]) {

  import java.net.URLDecoder.decode

  def parsedRawQueryString = (for {
    s <- decode(req.rawQueryString, "UTF-8").split('&') if s.contains('=')
  } yield {
    val index = s.indexOf('=')
    s.substring(0, index) -> s.substring(index + 1)
  }).toMap
}

def route = Action {
  request => 
    val queryParams = request.parsedRawQueryString
}