Search filters sometimes result in 414 error

This thread is resolved. Here is a description of the problem and solution.

Problem: Sometime custom search View queries result in 414 server errors.

Solution: 414 errors indicate your server has constraints on the number of characters that can appear in a URL. Custom search Views produce long URL strings when there are many filters applied, and there's no good way around that. In this case, I was able to produce a URL with 1082 characters, so I recommend asking your host company to increase the maximum URL length to at least 1500 characters.

This support ticket is created 6 years, 10 months ago. There's a good chance that you are reading advice that it now obsolete.

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Tagged: Views, Views plugin

This topic contains 1 reply, has 2 voices.

Last updated by Christian Cox 6 years, 10 months ago.

Assisted by: Christian Cox.

Author

Posts

January 5, 2018 at 5:02 pm #603880

Lime Valley

I am trying to:
Search by filters on a view, and certain combinations result in the following error:

This page isn’t working
If the problem continues, contact the site owner.
HTTP ERROR 414

Link to a page where the issue can be seen:

hidden link

Example result with error:

hidden link

I expected to see:

Blank results or a message that none are found, but the page still drawing correctly

Instead, I got:

This page isn’t working
If the problem continues, contact the site owner.
HTTP ERROR 414

January 7, 2018 at 5:25 pm #604094

Christian Cox

Hi, a 414 error indicates that your site's host has implemented a restriction on the number of characters it can accommodate in URLs. Your best bet here is to ask your site's host to increase that URL character count restriction. The current URL has a problem with 349 characters. In order to determine the maximum possible number of characters, I checked every option in the search form and produced a URL like this:

<em><u>hidden link</u></em>

That URL includes 1082 characters. I did not include a text search query, so you must account for that too. It's also possible you will need to accommodate more fields as you add them in the future. So I think 1500 might be a good starting point.