Data request to GeoServer: "Could not determine geoserver request from http request GET /geoserver/ows?service=WFS HTTP/1.1"

Question

I am using ExtJS ajax to send a data request to geoserver (which is in another domain different from web server), codes are as follows:

Ext.Ajax.request({ //send data request
        url : '../proxy.py?url=' + dataUrl,
        method : 'GET',
        headers: {
            'Content-Type': 'application/json'
        },
        success : function(response, opts) {
            var eventData = Ext.decode(response.responseText); //decode into JSON

            //parse eventData
        },
        failure: function(response, opts){
            Ext.Msg.alert("Failure", "Failed to retrieve event, please check service connection at " + dataUrl);                                    
        }
    });

since it relates to cross-domain issue, we employed a python proxy at web server, and put the GeoServer domain into the accessible list. If I put the request url in browser then I can get the JSON response; however by using ajax call in code, we got following error:

    <ows:Exception exceptionCode="MissingParameterValue" locator="request"> 
<ows:ExceptionText>Could not determine geoserver request from http request GET /geoserver/ows?service=WFS HTTP/1.1 
    Accept-Encoding: identity&#xd; 
    Host: XXXX&#xd; 
    Connection: close&#xd; 
    User-Agent: Python-urllib/2.5&#xd; &#xd; 
    </ows:ExceptionText> </ows:Exception>

I searched online, somebody said it's an issue related with proxy and the request headers. however, no detailed solution is found yet. I hope someone here can help me out.

thanks a lot!

UPDATE: using escape() to escape the request URL!

Answer 1

If you send in URL only:

/geoserver/ows?service=WFS

you get this error. Minimal URL should be:

/geoserver/ows?service=wfs&request=GetCapabilities

if you need capabilities call with this params. If you need GeoJSON request for layer URL should be like this:

http://localhost:8090/geoserver/ows?service=WFS&version=1.0.0&request=GetFeature&typeName=topp:states&maxFeatures=50&outputFormat=json

UPDATE

in JS you should use encodeURIComponent to encode URL. escape() function shouldn't be used to encode URIs.