Web UI Bug: Folder navigation fails within branches ending with a plus sign (+)

[AlexGoOn]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Code Search and Navigation

Body

Hi,

When navigating a repository via the web interface, clicking on any folder inside a branch that ends with a plus character + (e.g., v1.2+) fails to load the folder content.

However, if the page is hard-refreshed (F5), the folder loads successfully.

Why this is important to us:

This naming convention is crucial for our GitHub organization (DevExpress Examples). In our repositories, such as maui-demo-app, branches ending with a + symbol signify that the code/example works seamlessly across all newer versions, rather than being restricted to just the single specified version. Changing our branching strategy to avoid this bug would break our semantic versioning clarity and existing code testing workflows.

I would also like to note that this naming convention had been working perfectly for years, and we have only recently noticed this regression.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Go to our repository: DevExpress-Examples/maui-demo-app (or any test repository).
2. Try to click on any subfolder in the repository file tree, for example CS.

Expected behavior:

The folder should open dynamically without requiring a full page reload.

Actual behavior:

The folder contents do not load

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[Chowdarysaritha311]

Hi @AlexGoOn,

This is a URL encoding bug. The + character has a special meaning in URLs — in query strings it is treated as an encoded space (%20). When the web UI constructs the dynamic (client-side) navigation request for a folder inside a branch named v1.2+, the + is likely not being percent-encoded as %2B before being embedded in the request URL or API call. This causes the server to misinterpret the branch name, returning nothing or an error — which is why the folder contents fail to load.

A hard-refresh (F5) works around it because the full page URL is re-evaluated by the browser from scratch (and may be handled differently at the server routing layer), bypassing the client-side navigation logic that has the encoding bug.

Why it's a regression:
A recent change to the client-side router or the tree navigation component likely altered how branch names are interpolated into fetch/API calls — previously the encoding was either handled correctly or happened to be harmless.

Recommended fix (for the GitHub team):
Ensure that branch names are passed through encodeURIComponent() (or equivalent) before being used in any dynamically constructed URL or API endpoint string. Specifically, + must become %2B.

Workaround in the meantime:
As you've found, a hard-refresh (F5) reliably loads the folder. You can also navigate directly by manually typing or pasting the full URL into the address bar.

This should be straightforward to fix — it's a well-known URL encoding pitfall. Hope GitHub engineering picks this up soon!

[imransihab0]

It looks like branch names ending with + break client-side navigation, but a hard refresh loads it correctly.
This seems like a regression related to how the + character is handled in routes. Appreciate you flagging this with clear steps and context.