How To Encode URI Data In Popular Languages

URL Encoding also known as Percent-encoding is the way to encode data passed in an URI (Uniform Resource Identifier), this system is used to convert special characters to hex form prefixed with a % sign, and prevents broken URLs. An encoded URL will look like the following:

Code:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%26pradeep+]%3D

In this article we'll see how URL encoding can be done in different languages:

PHP

PHP comes with a built-in function urlencode which Percent-encodes the string passed to it.

PHP:

<?php
print '<a href="/script/home.php?user_input=', urlencode($user_input), '">User Input</a>';
?>


Perl

In Perl there are multiple modules available which can do the work for you, or you can write such a subroutine yourself, let's take a look at booth examples below:

Code:

use URI::Escape;

$url = sprintf('http://pradeep.net.in/cgi-bin/hello.pl?user_input=%s',uri_escape($user_input));

sub urlencode {
    my $s = shift;
    $s =~ s/ /+/g;
    $s =~ s/([^A-Za-z0-9\+-])/sprintf("%%%02X", ord($1))/seg;
    return $s;
}

$url = sprintf('http://pradeep.net.in/cgi-bin/hello.pl?user_input=%s',urlencode($user_input));

Python

In Python the urllib module is used:

Code:

import urllib

print "Url : http://pradeep.net.in/cgi-bin/hello.py?user_input=%s" % (urllib.quote_plus(user_input))

JavaScript

The built-in functions encodeURIComponent(str) and encodeURI(str)

Code:

var url = "http://pradeep.net.in/cgi-bin/hello.py?user_input=" + encodeURIComponent(user_input);

ASP.Net

ASP.Net also has a built-in function to encode URL components with special characters.

Code:

String sUrl;
sUrl = "http://pradeep.net.in/cgi-bin/hello.py?user_input=" + Server.UrlEncode(sUserInput);

Response.Write("<a href=" + sUrl + ">User Input</a>");

References

mark.stosberg.com
Wiki
Stackoverflow

 

great reference. I was looking for URL encode in ASP