res.sendfile does not accept file system paths

[benkaiser]

I have come across an issue with a project I am writing to create a music player with nodejs. I came accross a strange error that would throw on some songs. I couldn't work out what was linking them all at the start but then I figured out it was that they all contained the percentage symbol "%" in their file location. I ruled out if the song was playable and if the url was correct by running the example urls directly from my terminal with mpg123 and they played correctly.

Here is there error:

Error: Bad Request
    at SendStream.error (/home/benkaiser/GIT/node-music-player/node_modules/express.io/node_modules/express/node_modules/send/lib/send.js:145:16)
    at SendStream.pipe (/home/benkaiser/GIT/node-music-player/node_modules/express.io/node_modules/express/node_modules/send/lib/send.js:298:31)
    at ServerResponse.res.sendfile (/home/benkaiser/GIT/node-music-player/node_modules/express.io/node_modules/express/lib/response.js:345:8)
    at /home/benkaiser/GIT/node-music-player/routes/index.js:37:11
    at callback (/home/benkaiser/GIT/node-music-player/node_modules/nedb/lib/executor.js:25:17)
    at Datastore._findOne (/home/benkaiser/GIT/node-music-player/node_modules/nedb/lib/datastore.js:436:10)
    at /home/benkaiser/GIT/node-music-player/node_modules/nedb/lib/executor.js:36:13
    at Object.q.process [as _onImmediate] (/home/benkaiser/GIT/node-music-player/node_modules/nedb/node_modules/async/lib/async.js:728:21)
    at processImmediate [as _immediateCallback] (timers.js:330:15)

Here is the function handling the request for the file:

function sendSong(req, res){
  app.db.songs.findOne({_id: req.params.id}, function(err, song){
    if(err || !song){
      res.status(404).send();
    } else {
      console.log(song.location);
      res.sendfile(song.location, {'root': '/'});
    }
  });
}

And here are some example urls of files that throw the error (notice they have % symbols in them):

/home/benkaiser/Music/Various Artists/100% Hits Of The Decade 2000 -/09 Milkshake.mp3
/home/benkaiser/Music/Showtek/Hardstyle - The Very Best Of 2/00 Rockin' Steady (100% Deepack M.mp3

Is there any sort of escaping that needs to happen for the files to be returned correctly? I could not find any documentation for it.

[jonathanong]

pretty sure this is the following issue: pillarjs/send#30

[benkaiser]

@jonathanong thanks for the link. Sure enough if I encode it it works just fine.

[dougwilson]

After implementing and un-implementing it in send and reflecting, it doesn't make sense in send. The issue to me is specific to res.sendfile and res.download because it's them, in express, that makes it seem like you should give a file system path. I'm thinking of including this in 5.x somehow.

[rlidwka]

this should be fixed in express@4.8.0 with res.sendFile