# Auth0 username format without pipe/special characters?

**URL:** <https://community.auth0.com/t/auth0-username-format-without-pipe-special-characters/34764>\
**Category:** Get Help\
**Created:** [December 6, 2019, 9:58am UTC](https://community.auth0.com/t/auth0-username-format-without-pipe-special-characters/34764 "2019-12-06T09:58:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![joelkennedy](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/auth0/user_avatar/community.auth0.com/joelkennedy/32/17842_2.png) [@joelkennedy](https://community.auth0.com/u/joelkennedy)\
**Post date:** [December 6, 2019, 9:58am UTC](https://community.auth0.com/t/auth0-username-format-without-pipe-special-characters/34764/1 "2019-12-06T09:58:13Z")

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Hi everyone,

I’m integrating Auth0 with a third party application via SAML, and while I thought it was all working great, I’ve just found out that the third party system’s iOS application is not compatible with special characters/pipes in the username. This is because it’s trying to load images via a URL without encoding it first, so it’s calling “apple|jf2uh32uhu3fh3ouh23ou” for example and that throws an error.

I was wondering whether you can change the username format of Auth0 when using Social integrations, i.e. like removing the pipe for example and just having “applehu3hufh3iuhfui23hf”.

Cheers

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**Author:** ![thameera](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/auth0/user_avatar/community.auth0.com/thameera/32/13430_2.png) [@thameera](https://community.auth0.com/u/thameera)\
**Post date:** [December 9, 2019, 8:23am UTC](https://community.auth0.com/t/auth0-username-format-without-pipe-special-characters/34764/3 "2019-12-09T08:23:06Z")

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Hi Joel, the user\_id from Auth0 will always have the pipe character.

Instead of changing that, you can configure the SAML addon to send a different attribute or a differently encoded version of that user\_id in the SAML response. To do that, the first step would be to figure out what exact attribute in the SAML response the iOS app is looking at. Once that is found out, a rule can be used to map a different value to that attribute. There is some documentation on how to do that here: [https://auth0.com/docs/protocols/saml/saml-configuration/saml-assertions](https://auth0.com/docs/protocols/saml/saml-configuration/saml-assertions)

Does that help?

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**Author:** ![stephen.slade](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/auth0/user_avatar/community.auth0.com/stephen.slade/32/33282_2.png) [@stephen.slade](https://community.auth0.com/u/stephen.slade)\
**Post date:** [June 7, 2022, 9:18am UTC](https://community.auth0.com/t/auth0-username-format-without-pipe-special-characters/34764/4 "2022-06-07T09:18:55Z")

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Hi there - interested to know if you made this work using rules?

We have the same issue with an application not able to accept pipe characters in the sub credential but according to this article it is not possible to override this character.

> [@JWT token: sub claim format](https://community.auth0.com/t/jwt-token-sub-claim-format/63112):
>
> Hi, I have a question regarding the format of the claim sub. Current value is the Auth0 user ID: identity\_provider|user\_id and I wanted to know if it’s possible to override it somehow? I found several posts bringing up this question and in which the answer was no and: Unlikely to change in the foreseeable future: yes; guaranteed: no Associated posts: [Sub claim format (Kubernetes restricted set)](https://community.auth0.com/t/sub-claim-format-kubernetes-restricted-set/21996)[Sub claim format for M2M tokens](https://community.auth0.com/t/sub-claim-format-for-m2m-tokens/39451) I allowed myself to ask it again if, by any chance, the fut…