Pathauto showing special characters in URL

Filed under: Content Management Systems » Drupal,

Special characters showing up in your Drupal URL's?

Are you saving a page, for example "What's New" and having it show up as example.com/what039s-new? This is a common problem with Drupal's pathauto module that is caused by the processing of special characters via Drupal's token module (newer pathauto releases require token module to work).

Solution to remove special characters from URL

As of the time of this writing, the solution to get your URL's to display correctly again involves:

Downloading, installing, and enabling the latest pathauto and token modules (be sure to run update.php after updating)
In pathauto settings, replace "title" with "title-raw," "catpath" with "catpath-raw," and so forth.

Older versions of pathauto were fixed with a patch. The above solution should be in place while we wait for a newer pathauto/ token release that resolves this issue.

View Comments

Thanks

Submitted by a web rocker on August 30, 2010 - 7:25am.

Thanks for this post,

I think this problem happens in drupal 6.0 only. I have never seen it in drupal 7.0.

Drupal Developer | Drupal Programmer
Drupal Website Development | Drupal Expert

thanks

Submitted by a web rocker on August 14, 2010 - 2:20pm.

Nevertheless, props to the creators, as I'd be up *** creek without this module.

Pathauto with Drupal 6.x

Submitted by a web rocker on June 11, 2010 - 5:52am.

It looks like the special character issue in Pathauto is fixed in Drupal 6.x, correct me if I'm wrong. This servers as a reminder to keep modules updated in Drupal. Actually, I used to follow the slogan - if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I still do, but if something doesn't work, I upgrade.

Encode and decode the url

Submitted by a web rocker on April 30, 2010 - 3:55pm.

Why can't browsers just come up with a way to adjust the URL for the user?

Browser URL

Submitted by We Rock Your Web on May 3, 2010 - 11:01am.

Browsers merely display the URL. The format and coding of the URL is determined by the hosting server. Since each user has their own unique website browser, they are in effect only looking through a "window" at the URL.

Great!

Submitted by a web rocker on December 21, 2009 - 3:36am.

I've been finding ways to make my domain as search-able as possible. Been reading a number of essays and other types of information on the web and its great that I found this site with an entry that can help me well. Thanks again!

Tuna

Submitted by a web rocker on December 13, 2009 - 2:59am.

Thanks My Friend...

Pathauto raw paths?

Submitted by a web rocker on June 15, 2009 - 9:23am.

Drupal's pathauto module is great and has saved me a lot of work as far as having to manually generate SEF (Search Engine Friendly) URL's, but what is up with their implementation? Why are we forced to use raw output (ie. adding -raw to the end of a path on the pathauto configuration page), and if we don't we get an error?

Nevertheless, props to the creators, as I'd be up *** creek without this module.

Thanks!

Submitted by a web rocker on May 4, 2009 - 10:50am.

I guess I need to learn to update Drupal more regularly Thanks for this - the screwed up pathauto paths were driving me bananas!!