Why is the route not finding the the decimal

Ok so i have an application that i use this jquery

$("#band_events").load("/load_events/"+ escape($('#request_artist').val()), successCallback );

It works great but if #request_artist is R.E.M. or somehthing with decimals or something weird rails has problems like

ActionController::RoutingError (No route matches "/load_events/R.E.M." with {:method=>:get}):

here is my routes line

map.load_events '/load_events/:band', :controller => 'pages', :action => 'load_events'

Any suggestions

I would try

map.connect ... , :constraints => { :band => /.*/ }

(Or any other pattern of your taste.) About constraints

It doesn't seem to be working in all versions of rails, though. I'm pretty sure I used this trick before, but can't get it to work now. So, good luck with it.

To escape a URL you should use encodeURIComponent instead of escape.