How to Get Unicode 'non-ASCII' Characters in HTTPS URL to Appear Correctly

In most cases URLs running over HTTP work fine, but not when using HTTPS (i.e. over SSL). This usually results in Unicode (non-ASCII) characters in an HTTPS URL appear incorrect in the URL, and the served page contains numerous errors

This occurs when the useBodyEncodingForURI="true" flag is not defined in the HTTPS connector definition in conf/server.xml of the Apache Tomcat application server running JIRA. This flag is set as such by default in 'recommended' distribution installations of JIRA.

However, in JIRA WAR setups, this might not be the case. Hence, ensure that the useBodyEncodingForURI="true" flag is included in the following element of the conf/server.xml file of your Apache Tomcat installation running JIRA:

            <Connector port="8443" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192"
              maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75"
              enableLookups="false" disableUploadTimeout="true"
              acceptCount="100" scheme="https" secure="true"
              clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS" useBodyEncodingForURI="true" />

After specifying the useBodyEncodingForURI="true" in all connector definitions (i.e. both the HTTP and the HTTPS connectors), as described in the 'Modifying Tomcat server.xml' section of the Installing JIRA on Tomcat 6.0 and 5.5 documentation.