% Character causing problems with the getParameterMap() method:

Question

Hello All,
I've run run across something I've never seen or heard of before. Basically, we have a jsp form that returns form data into a Map object from the request.getParameterMap() method. We have code in place to pull out wrong entity characters that the user may have submitted, like *, &, !, etc... The problem is we have a field that takes a 3 digit code, like 999, but if the user puts in 99%, the percent character messes up the parameter map. The request parameters go out fine from the form, but in the doPost method of the servlet the map gets changed or it changes the request parameters and 99% becomes 99/fastname somehow where f is a jsp variable for the jsp form and lastname would be the name of the next key or % is doing something else that might explain why it's overwritting the first two characters here. Not sure. Has anyone ever seen this before or have any ideas as to how to fix it? Other entity characters don't seem to do this in the app.
Any help or sympathy is appreciated!
Thanks,
James

Answer 1

Well I've done more investigating and I think I've narrowed it down more. We are using JSP's and something I've never seen before, changing an http request/response object after it's been sent to the server.
Here is some of the code:
var url = etc...
var httpRequest = new ActiveXObject('Microsoft.XMLHTTP');
httpRequest.open('POST', url, false);
httpRequest.send();     
//I added this code to see what happens to my 99% value.
var xmlDocument = trim(httpRequest.responseText);
message = document.getElementById('3digitfieldName').value;
alert(message);
I added some code in because I want to see when the 99% field value gets changed. When it leaves the form we can see what the value is from: Map paramMap = request.getParameterMap();
It then goes out to the code that changes the request into the new ActiveXObject. Still at this point it's showing 99%, but when it returns back to: Map paramMap = request.getParameterMap(); the value is changed to 99/fonsignees, which is the name of the next field (parameter) of consignees. /f shows up in my debug editor, but when I print out the text it's just showing a box symbol in between 99 and onsignees. f is a variable for the form btw. What I'm thinking is that somehow, MSXML doesn't like the "%" character, but I'm not sure how to fix this?