title: REST - GET best practices for special characters
body: <p>We have REST API's. I was trying to figure out the best way to do a Get with some special characters.</p>
  
  <p>Currently, we have something like this: <a href="http://myhost.com/api/book/name=HarryPotter" rel="nofollow">http://myhost.com/api/book/name=HarryPotter</a></p>
  
  <p>The above URL works just fine, but gets complicated when certain special character's are included in the queryparam like '&amp;' or '/', which will result in "No operation matching request path ... is found, HTTP Method : GET, ContentType : <em>/</em>, Accept : <em>/</em>," </p>
  
  <p>for ex: <a href="http://myhost.com/api/book/name=Dark/Thirty" rel="nofollow">http://myhost.com/api/book/name=Dark/Thirty</a>.</p>
  
  <p>This will consider the '/' in 'Dark/Thirty' as an URL separator. </p>
  
  <p>What is the best practice to be able to search such queries. Is using a JSON a better practice, if yes should I be using a GET or a POST? I believe it should be POST, as any slash in the query param is treated as an Url separator.</p>
  
  <p>Meaning: even this would fail for GET. <a href="http://myhost.com/api/book/search=" rel="nofollow">http://myhost.com/api/book/search=</a>{"name"="Dark/Thirty"}</p>
  
  <p>And since this is actually not a POST i do not want to use it. As I am just listing out the books that meet my search criteria and not modifying or adding anything. </p>
  
  <p>Any guideline in tackling similar problems?</p>