Summary

Currently the urlEncode Jira smart value function uses the Java URLEncode class (java.net.URLEncoder) for encoding.

Per the class documentation when handling blank spaces, it encodes these as a + character:

The space character " " is converted into a plus sign "+".

On the other hand, the Java URI class (java.net.URI) encodes blank spaces as %20:

An illegal character is quoted simply by encoding it. The space character, for example, is quoted by replacing it with "%20". UTF-8 contains US-ASCII, hence for US-ASCII characters this transformation has exactly the effect required by RFC 2396.

When using smart values that are URL encoded in this manner as part of a URI path, depending on the position of the encoded value, it can break the URL as the + character will be taken as exactly that as opposed to treated as a blank value.

Workaround

The + character can be replaced as part of the smart value using the replace() or replaceAll() functions. Further details on the workaround can be found on the article:

• URL Encode Jira smart alues using %20 instead of + character