Resolved: Connecting MongoDB URI with Password having Special Characters

• MongoDB provides drivers for connecting databases with various programming languages like Java, Python, JavaScript, and C#. As per official documentation, there is a standard URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) for creating connection through programming. The syntax is,

mongodb://username:password@host:port/defaultauthdb

• If the password has special characters like : / ? # [ ] @ then there will be a problem with the above URL syntax for making connection. To resolve this, Percentage-encoding mechanism can be used in URI,

A percent-encoded octet is encoded as a character triplet, consisting of the percent character "%" followed by the two hexadecimal digits representing that octet's numeric value - Wikipedia.

• Percentage-encoding for / ? # [ ] @

  / - %2F
  ? - %3F
  # - %23
  [ - %5B
  ] - %5D
  @ - %40
  

Sample Passwords

• Secure@pass567 can be written as Secure%40pass567
  • URI: mongodb://tom:Secure%40pass567@localhost:27017/demodbname
• Secre#tig] can be written as Secre%23tig%5D
  • URI: mongodb://jerry:Secre%23tig%5D@localhost:27017/demodbname

Sample Java Snippet for Connecting MongoDB

import com.mongodb.client.MongoClient;
import com.mongodb.client.MongoClients;
import com.mongodb.client.MongoCollection;
import com.mongodb.client.MongoDatabase;
import org.bson.Document;
import static com.mongodb.client.model.Filters.eq;

/**
 * MongoDB Connection Test using Java
 * @author Anthoniraj Amalanathan
 * @since 17-May-2022
 */

public class MongoTest {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        /* Password has special char @ hence percentage encoding %40 used. */

        String uri = "mongodb://tom:Secure%40pass567@localhost:27017/demodbname";
        try (MongoClient mongoClient = MongoClients.create(uri)) {
            MongoDatabase database = mongoClient.getDatabase("demodbname");
            MongoCollection<Document> collection = database.getCollection("employee");
            Document doc = collection.find(eq("_id", "100")).first();
            System.out.println(doc.toJson());
          }
    }
}