URL considerations

The following considerations apply to URLs in management API requests.

URL length

The portion of a URL that follows mapi, excluding any appended query parameters, is limited to 4,095 bytes. If a request includes a URL that violates that limit, HCP returns a status code of 414 (Request URI Too Large).

Percent-encoding for special characters

Some characters have special meaning when used in a URL and may be interpreted incorrectly when used for other purposes. To avoid ambiguity, percent-encode the special characters listed in the table below.

Percent-encoded values are not case sensitive.

CharacterPercent-encoded values
Space%20
Tab%09
New line%0A
Carriage return%0D
+%2B
%%25
#%23
?%3F
&%26
\&5C

Quotation marks with URLs in command lines

When using the HCP management API, you work in a Windows, Unix, or Mac OS X shell. Some characters in the commands you enter may have special meaning to the shell. For example, the ampersand (&) used in URLs to join multiple query parameters may indicate that a process should be put in the background.

To avoid the possibility of the Windows, Unix, or Mac OS X shell misinterpreting special characters in a URL, always enclose the entire URL in double quotation marks.