Re: [apps-discuss] draft-ietf-appsawg-json-pointer escape characters

["Manger, James H" <[e-mail]>]

If we really want URL-friendly escapes for JSON pointers pick '~' as the escape character. Use '~0' and '~1' as escapes for a '~' and '/' in a JSON member name respectively. If we want a different separator (eg ';') to distinguish arrays vs objects in pointers, escape it as '~2'.

{ "a/b": true, "c~d": false, "d":{"e":null}, "f;g":null, "h":[100,200] }

JSON pointers to items in the above JSON value could be:
  /a~1b
  /c~0d
  /d/e
  /f~2g
  /h;0

These 5 can go in a URI query parameter or fragment without any %-escaping.
You still need URI %-escaping for other characters (eg for pointer "/<hi>" to fragment "#/%3Chi%3E") so the receiver always needs to do %-unescaping, but there should be less confusion between JSON pointer and URI layers. It is mostly harmless to apply %-escaping more than necessary (eg it doesn't matter whether or not the pointer "/a~1b" is put in a URI fragment as "#/a~1b" or "#%2fa~1b" or "#%2fa%7eb").

--
James Manger