problem with test plan that has a test case href with a non-ascii character
I have a tool that is trying to work with a strange test case URI returned as part of a test plan XML document.
The testcase href contains a non-ASCII character represented in the XML document as  
<ns0:testcase href="https://jazz-server:11443/jazz/service/com.ibm.rqm.integration.service.IIntegrationService/resources/My+Project/testcase/blah_ _blah" />
I believe the corresponding URI should be:
https://jazz-server:11443/jazz/service/com.ibm.rqm.integration.service.IIntegrationService/resources/My+Project/testcase/blah_%a0_blah
But that URI gets me a 404 error.
How can I deal with that URL? Can I change my REST GET request to return a different URL in the test plan document? I see a hrefs with a mix of internal and external IDs. Can I get these as internal IDs?
The testcase href contains a non-ASCII character represented in the XML document as  
<ns0:testcase href="https://jazz-server:11443/jazz/service/com.ibm.rqm.integration.service.IIntegrationService/resources/My+Project/testcase/blah_ _blah" />
I believe the corresponding URI should be:
https://jazz-server:11443/jazz/service/com.ibm.rqm.integration.service.IIntegrationService/resources/My+Project/testcase/blah_%a0_blah
But that URI gets me a 404 error.
How can I deal with that URL? Can I change my REST GET request to return a different URL in the test plan document? I see a hrefs with a mix of internal and external IDs. Can I get these as internal IDs?
One answer
All URI-reserved characters (see RFC 2396) except the '/' character in an external ID MUST be URL encoded in GET/PUT requests (see https://jazz.net/wiki/bin/view/Main/RqmApi#External_ID).
Comments
Clarifying my original post (and squeezing into character limit):
1) The test plan XML document return to me by RQM contains an href that used an external ID style URL. The XML document contained an embedded "# & 160 ;" (no spaces - original post clobbered that sequence). The entire external ID portion of the href was:
Solution_Story_191458_deploy_vm_with_different_AZ_nodify_default_schedule_zone_in_nova.conf_to_AZ_1_and_deploy & # 160 ;_nova_AZ_2
I don't think that has any other special characters.
2) Python XML library extracted the href as a string with an embedded byte, \a0, which urllib2 rejected as containing a non-ascii character.
3) I URL-encoded the URL, replacing the \a0 byte with the string %a0.
Server returns 404 error. So it seems the URL-encoded URL is not usable either.
Back to my original questions.
John, can you trying using HTTP Requester or Poster to GET the feed of test cases and the test case in question? Just log in to RQM using Firefox and GET the test case feed/resource from HTTP Requester or Poster with the following header:
Accept = application/xml