PDF conversion encodes & in hyperlinks as &, breaking URLs

[gbenm]

Hey there 👋, could you help me 🙏

Problem

When inserting a hyperlink into a Word template using XDocReport (Velocity) and converting it to PDF via XWPF, any & characters in the URL are automatically encoded as &, resulting in broken links in the generated PDF.

For example, a URL like:

https://www.google.com/search?q=ola&sclient=gws-wiz

The result in the PDF:

https://www.google.com/search?q=ola&sclient=gws-wiz

This causes the link to not function correctly when clicked from the PDF.

Example

InputStream input = new FileInputStream("template.docx");
IXDocReport report = XDocReportRegistry.getRegistry().loadReport(input, TemplateEngineKind.Velocity);

IContext context = report.createContext();
context.put("url", "https://www.google.com/search?q=ola&sclient=gws-wiz");

Options options = Options.getTo(ConverterTypeTo.PDF).via(ConverterTypeVia.XWPF);
OutputStream output = new FileOutputStream("output.pdf");

report.convert(context, options, output);

The template:

template.docx

Version

• xdocreport 2.1.0
• macos 15.5

Thanks for your help!

[angelozerr]

Any contribution are welcome!

[gbenm]

Any contribution are welcome!

Thanks for the response @angelozerr.

I believe the issue might be coming from this line in DocxDocumentHandler.java:

xdocreport/document/fr.opensagres.xdocreport.document.docx/src/main/java/fr/opensagres/xdocreport/document/docx/textstyling/DocxDocumentHandler.java

Line 653 in 83a1262

ref = StringUtils.xmlEscape( ref );

where StringEscapeUtils.xmlEscape(...) is applied — this is escaping the & in URLs and causing the issue.

Interestingly, this change seems to have been introduced while addressing a previous issue:
https://code.google.com/archive/p/xdocreport/issues/147