Request.parse_sort_criteria may not handle literal + in sort params

[realityendshere]

I opened an equivalent issue on the JSON API spec project: json-api/json-api#486

If I am not mistaken, many web servers see the plus symbol ("+") as a substitute for a white space or "%20" when sent as a query param in the URL. For example, this request

GET /people?sort=+age,+name

shows up as " age, name" to the Request.parse_sort_criteria method. Which is a total bummer for the if statement

if sort.start_with?('+')
  sort_criteria[:direction] = :asc
elsif sort.start_with?('-')
  sort_criteria[:direction] = :desc
else
  @errors.concat(...)
end

The spec compliant GET request leads to a 400 error because " age" and " name" both start with a white space instead of a "+"!

I find I can address this by either allowing a leading white space to behave as a + (e.g. sort.start_with?(' ')) or using %2b to represent + in the query params and using something like sort_criteria = URI.unescape(sort_criteria) to decode %2b into +.

Is there a preference for using one, the other, or both?

[vrybas]

@realityendshere can be closed :)

[realityendshere]

No longer applicable since JSON API dropped "+" in ascending sort in json-api/json-api@8c63a72