url option breaks encoded URLs

[ltm]

The wrong URL will be opened when the {url: true} option is set and the URL contains encoded characters. This is particularly problematic when using reserved characters in query parameters (in practice this is common with base64-encoded values). For example:

const open = require('open');

const url = new URL('https://httpbin.org/get')
url.searchParams.append('foo', '%');
url.searchParams.append('bar', '&');
url.searchParams.append('baz', '=');

console.log(url.href);
open(url.href, {url: false});
open(url.href, {url: true});

The valid string representation of this URL is https://httpbin.org/get?foo=%25&bar=%26&baz=%3D and when opened with {url: false} the service will echo the correct parameters:

"args": {
  "bar": "&", 
  "baz": "=", 
  "foo": "%"
},

However, when opened with {url: true} the values get double-encoded:

"args": {
  "bar": "%26", 
  "baz": "%3D", 
  "foo": "%25"
},

Since query string only gets escaped correctly on WSL when {url: true} is set (cf. #171), there's currently no way to open a URL containing reserved characters in the query string on WSL.

I'm thinking that a solution would be to only encode double-quotes, i.e.:

if (options.url) {
	target = target.replace(/"/g, '%22');

	if (isWsl) {
		target = target.replace(/&/g, '^&');
	}
}

Alternatively:

const url = require('url');

// ...

if (options.url) {
	target = url.parse(target).href;

	if (isWsl) {
		target = target.replace(/&/g, '^&');
	}
}

[sindresorhus]

// @herberttn

[ltm]

@sindresorhus @herberttn The change in #182 uses url.URL to parse and encode the URL which is supported since Node v7.0.0, v6.13.0. This will work for both encoded and unencoded URLs, but it will throw a TypeError if the target is not a valid URL.

const url = require('url');

// ...

if (options.url) {
	target = new url.URL(target).href;

	if (isWsl) {
		target = target.replace(/&/g, '^&');
	}
}

[herberttn]

I do not see any reason not to move forward with this