Issue with Ampersand (&) Not Appearing when Concatenating

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Posted on by CU-13072004-0

Hi everyone,

I’m working on a project in AL where I need to build a URL with query parameters. Everything works fine when I use other characters as the parameter separator (like #), but when I use the ampersand (&), it doesn't show up in the final URL string. Here’s the relevant portion of my code:

procedure GetUriWithQueryParams(BaseUri: Text; QueryParams: Dictionary of [Text, Text]) FullUri: Text
    var
        DictionaryKey: Text;
        ParamsSeparator: Char;
    begin
        ParamsSeparator := '&';
        FullUri := '';
        FullUri := FullUri + BaseUri + '?';

        foreach DictionaryKey in QueryParams.Keys() do
            FullUri := FullUri + DictionaryKey + '=' + QueryParams.Get(DictionaryKey) + ParamsSeparator;

        FullUri := FullUri.Substring(1, StrLen(FullUri) - 1);
    end;

When I test the function, the & separators don’t appear between the query parameters in the final URL, but if I change the ParamsSeparator to something else (like #), the URL is built correctly with that separator.

For example, calling the function with this input:

dict1.Add('key', 'daskdkakdakda');
dict1.Add('someVal', '123412314');
dict1.add('third', 'sdakda');
Message(GetUriWithQueryParams('http://api.weatherapi.com/v1/current.json', dict1));

Produces this result:

http://api.weatherapi.com/v1/current.json?key=daskdkakdakdasomeVal=123412314third=sdakda

It seems like the & symbol is just ignored.

Is there something I’m missing about how AL handles the & character in strings or URLs? Has anyone encountered this issue before or knows how to fix it?

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

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Answers (1)

Vahid Ghafarpour 12,090 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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I suggest trying this change:

ParamsSeparator := '%26'; // URL-encoded ampersand

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CU-13072004-0 30 on at

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It doesn't work.

It's a little dumb as it literally interprets it as the sequence {%,2,6}. Also when I try to assign this value ('%26') to a char variable, it says

Cannot implicitly convert type 'Text' to 'Char'

And consequently if we assign '%26' to a text variable (to fix the compiler error), so e.g. TextVar := '%26', and we write Message(TextVar), this code would produce a pop up with the message '%26', not the & symbol.

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Gerardo Rentería Ga... 25,169 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi

I h ope this can help Dynamics 365 Business Central: How to encode and decode URL/HTML (UrlEncode, UrlDecode, HtmlEncode, and HtmlDecode) | Dynamics 365 Lab (yzhums.com)

Best

GR

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Verified answer

Mohammad Usman Sajid 6 on at

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Hi, after trying out many different things.

Just found this out:

ParamsSeparator := '&&';

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Suggested answer

Khushbu Rajvi. 20,275 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hope this helps as well: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/discussions/excelgeneral/cant-join-two-data-cells-with-ampersand/3048261

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/search-for-ampersand/298aaf42-34e7-4ff5-8a9a-1d96c00f894c

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Jackson Eagle 20 on at

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I’ve run into this issue a lot—& often gets lost even when using encodeURIComponent. What helps me is breaking it into two steps:

Generate safely: Use online URL  Encoder to see exactly how your parameters are encoded (e.g., & becomes %26).

Verify reception: Paste the resulting string into online URL decode tool to check how Dynamics interprets it.

This approach makes it easy to spot whether the problem is in encoding, transport, or AL’s parsing. It also helps figure out if double-encoding is needed without guessing. Once you can see the exact before-and-after, debugging becomes much faster. You can even use it to test different encoding strategies side by side. Personally, keeping both tools open while working on query strings has saved me a ton of headaches.

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Cenzo 336 on at

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procedure GetUriWithQueryParams(BaseUri: Text; QueryParams: Dictionary of [Text, Text]) FullUri: Text
var
DictionaryKey: Text;
ParamsSeparator: Char;
begin
ParamsSeparator := '&';
FullUri := BaseUri + '?';
foreach DictionaryKey in QueryParams.Keys() do
FullUri += DictionaryKey + '=' + QueryParams.Get(DictionaryKey) + ParamsSeparator;
// Remove the trailing separator
FullUri := FullUri.Substring(0, StrLen(FullUri) - 1);
end;

The issue with the ampersand (&) not appearing in your concatenated URL string in AL language is due to how the final substring operation is being performed and possibly how string concatenation is handled.

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Cenzo 336 on at

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This will be More helpfull : https://yzhums.com/39038/

or

try
ParamsSeparator := '&&';

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