Versioning: Special characters in summary field cause URL malformation in POST request

[jlipka]

Describe the bug

When creating a new version of an item in the UI, it is possible to provide a "Summary" in a dialog box to explain why the version is being created. However, if certain special characters (e.g., # or &, maybe there are even more characters which lead to this problem) are included in the Summary, it gets truncated when sent via a POST request as a query parameter. This also leads to the URL being malformed, with the result the summary is not completely persisted in the database.

I encountered this issue in DSpace v9 (Sandbox-Page).
This bug also appears in v8 (Demo-Page), I have no information about v7.

To Reproduce

1. Create a new version of an item in the UI.
2. In the dialog box, input a Summary containing special characters such as # or &.
3. Submit the form and observe the resulting POST request and the malformed URL.

2025-05-13-dspace-9-versioning-bug.webm

Expected behavior

The summary should be sent in its entirety, including special characters such as # or &, without being truncated or altering the structure of the URL. Proper encoding or handling of these characters should ensure that the request functions as intended. The entered reason should not get (partially) lost.

Related work

[jlipka]

I got a one-liner fix for our instance, i will provide the merge request today or tomorrow.