MODX router, query string with ampersand parameters issue

Dear community members,

I am testing migration of an old Etomite 0.6 site to MODX. I carefully read docs.modx.com, The Official Guide as well as numerous community posts. Unfortunately I did not find a solution yet - the issue is query stings with ampersand parameters obviously are not interpreted by MODX router and lead to 404 error.

My development environment is:

WAMP; PHP 7.1.33, mySQL 5.7.14

Eclipse for PHP Developers Oxygen.3a Release (4.7.3a), with PHP Development Tools 5.3.0.201803070838 (supports PHP versions 5.1 up to 7.4).

MODX 2.7.3 with FormIt 4.2.6 and Wayfinder 2.3.3.

Query string example:
http://localhost/modx-tests-diabolo/index.php?id=42?search=INTERPRET&word=Rory%20Gallagher&cid=425&addBasket=1

Related access.log excerpt:
[17/Aug/2021:12:44:54 +0200] “GET /modx-tests-diabolo/index.php?id=42?search=INTERPRET&word=Rory%20Gallagher&cid=425&addBasket=1 HTTP/1.1” 404 3087

Etomite result:
Etomite_Search-form_after-title-itm-clicked

MODX result:

I believe the problem is that you have two ? in your url:

.../index.php?id=42?search=INTERPRET...

instead of

.../index.php?id=42&search=INTERPRET...

Originally I did not address the 2nd question mark topic due to found it works in Etomite (refer screenshot below) and also found on Query string - Wikipedia
“The question mark is used as a separator, and is not part of the query string.[2][3]”

Etomite works with 2 question marks in query string (screenshot):

But now on your suggestion tried it with ampersand instead of question mark and surprise surprise it now behaves as expected, click on title list item switches back to “calling” document-id and outputs what I coded to.

Many thanks halftrainedharry, this ends a lot of research and fumbling around for me.

I would expect trouble if you’re going from Etomite to MODX 2.7.3 directly, unless you’re cutting and pasting the content into 2.7.3.

I do it 1:1, i.e. class by class, document by document and snippet by snippet.
For preliminary DB-access I used your recommendation in Bob's Guides | Using MySQL in MODX which works fine until now.

I would have expected that to work in 2.7.3. Let me know if you have any suggested updates for that page.