Tomcat Invalid character found in the request target

While running an application in the tomcat server, sometimes we might get the following error.

org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Processor.service Error parsing HTTP request header
 Note: further occurrences of HTTP request parsing errors will be logged at DEBUG level.
	java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Invalid character found in the request target [/index.php?s=/Index/\think\app/invokefunction&function=call_user_func_array&vars[0]=md5&vars[1][]=HelloThinkPHP21 ]. The valid characters are defined in RFC 7230 and RFC 3986
		at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11InputBuffer.parseRequestLine(Http11InputBuffer.java:509)
		at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Processor.service(Http11Processor.java:511)
		at org.apache.coyote.AbstractProcessorLight.process(AbstractProcessorLight.java:65)
		at org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol$ConnectionHandler.process(AbstractProtocol.java:831)
		at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.NioEndpoint$SocketProcessor.doRun(NioEndpoint.java:1673)
		at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.SocketProcessorBase.run(SocketProcessorBase.java:49)
		at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1191)
		at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:659)
		at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.TaskThread$WrappingRunnable.run(TaskThread.java:61)
		at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:748)

First, make sure that the domain pointed to the server is working fine or not expired.

From tomcat, it is suggested that

The HTTP/1.1 specification requires that certain characters are %nn encoded when used in URI query strings. Unfortunately, many user agents including all the major browsers are not compliant with this specification and use these characters in unencoded form. To prevent Tomcat rejecting such requests, this attribute may be used to specify the additional characters to allow. If not specified, no additional characters will be allowed. The value may be any combination of the following characters: " < > [ \ ] ^ ` { | } . Any other characters present in the value will be ignored.

Tomcat increased its security and no longer allows raw square brackets or the above characters in the query string.

In order to resolve this issue use relaxedQueryChars attributes inside the server.xml file of tomcat server. Make sure to back up the server.xml file before we change it.

Open the server.xml file using vim or vi and type Shift + i

sudo vim /path_to_tomcat/conf/server.xml

Press Esc and hit :wq! and save the changes

Restart the tomcat server.

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How to deploy the war file on remote tomcat server

In this tutorial, we are going to learn basic steps to deploy our war file to the tomcat server.

Create a war file:

First, create a war file, this will depend upon the framework used, each framework will provide the command to create a war file. The war file will contain the extension with .war.

Connect to remote server:

Now, let's connect to a remote server where we want to deploy to war file. Here we are SSH connection to the server

If you are using a server password to connect using the following command

sudo ssh server_username@ip_address

Here use your server username and server IP address to connect. For example ubuntu@34.344.56

If you are using a .pem file or other private keys to connect to a server then use the following command

sudo ssh -i path_to_pem_file server_username@ip_address

Download tomcat on the remote server:

Once ssh to a remote server, let's download the tomact server where we will deploy our war file.

Here, we are using tomcat 8 so will download the same.

sudo wget https://dlcdn.apache.org/tomcat/tomcat-8/v8.5.81/bin/apache-tomcat-8.5.81.tar.gz

Extract the file

sudo tar xvzf apache-tomcat-8.5.81.tar.gz

Here, generally, we put the extracted tomcat server under /opt directory of the system.

In this tutorial, we are not using tomcat GUI to make it simple for set up. so let's remove the unnecessary folder from the tomcat server.

sudo rm -r apache-tomcat-8.5.81/webapps/*

Copy war file to remote server:

Now, let's copy the war file to deploy.

sudo scp path_to_war/war_file_name.war server_username@ip_address:~

This will copy the war file into the home directory of the remote server. If you are using .pem file or other private keys then use the following command to copy the war file.

sudo scp -i path_to_pem_file path_to_war/war_file_name.war server_username@ip_address:~

Once the war file is copied and moved to the remote server then, ssh to the remote server if not ssh.

Deploy War file:

First, give sufficient permission for copied war file

sudo chmod 555 war_file_name.war

Copy war file to the webapps directory of our tomcat server

sudo mv war_file_name.war /opt/apache-tomcat-8.5.81/webapps/ROOT.war

Note: make sure that you should copy the war file as ROOT.war inside webapps directory

Install Java:

Tomcat server requires java to run. So let's install java; here, we are using OpenJDK 8 using the following command.

sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk

Confirm the installation

java -version

We can see the similar output

openjdk version "1.8.0_312"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_312-8u312-b07-0ubuntu1~20.04-b07)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.312-b07, mixed mode)

Run the Tomcat server:

First, navigate to the tomcat directory and use the below command to run the tomcat server

cd /opt/apache-tomcat-8.5.81/
sudo sh bin/startup.sh

If the tomcat server is running successfully then you are supposed to see the output similar as below

Using CATALINA_BASE:   /opt/apache-tomcat-8.5.81
Using CATALINA_HOME:   /opt/apache-tomcat-8.5.81
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /opt/apache-tomcat-8.5.81/temp
Using JRE_HOME:        /usr
Using CLASSPATH:       /opt/apache-tomcat-8.5.81/bin/bootstrap.jar:/opt/apache-tomcat-8.5.81/bin/tomcat-juli.jar
Using CATALINA_OPTS:   
Tomcat started.

See the logs of tomcat:

Once Tomcat is running successfully, we need to verify whether the war file is running as expected or not

sudo tail -f logs/catalina.out

This will give the last log file lines; if you want to specify how many lines to view then replace f with e.g 1000 to see the 1000 lines log.

Stop the Tomcat server:

sudo sh bin/shutdown.sh

If the app is running fine, you can open the application using the public IP address or with the domain name if pointed to that IP address.

http://example.com:8080

Or

http://124.56.234:8080

Here, the tomcat server will run with port 8080 by default.

Change the port 8080 to 80:

Under server.xml you can find the following tag.

change the above XML tag as below:

Here, we are changing the port from 8080 to 80 and 8443 to 443. By doing so, if your domain running with port 8080 i.e example.com:8080, now it will open with port 80 i.e example.com. If you type your domain in the browser then you can run it with both HTTP and HTTPS i.e http://example.com and https://example.com.

Save the server.xml file and re-run the tomcat server by first stopping it.

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How to resolve the encoding issue while building Java Application

In this tutorial, we are going to understand the different scenarios where we might get encoding issues while building the Java application as a war or jar file and deploy it to the server. 

The main encoding issue here is, for some languages like Hebrew, Chinese, Arabic, etc there might get the chance of appearing as question marks instead of actual specific text. This issue might be due to different cases.

1. Sometimes the serverside rendering language like jsp, gsp pages might cause the issue we can use the following tag in those pages.

<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>

2. We might get the issue due to database data where we don't set the configugre the utf-8 encoding. To resolve the issue we can set the jdbc connection url as follows:

jdbc:mysql://hostname/database_naeme?useUnicode=yes&&characterEncoding=UTF-8

3. If our application contains some other language that requires saving operation in the database. Better to create the database using encoding using the following command for the MySQL database.

CREATE DATABASE database_name DEFAULT CHARACTER SET "utf8" COLLATE "utf8_general_ci";

Make sure to change the actual database instead of [database_name].

4. If we are using hibernate then better to configure the settings as

hibernate.connection.charSet=UTF-8
hibernate.connection.characterEncoding=UTF-8
hibbernate.connection.useUnicode=true

5. If we are using build tools like Jenkins for deployment we need to configure the encoding In Jenkins: we can create a global variable and set encoding config as below:

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