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What Is URL Encoding?
"URL Encoding", otherwise known as "Percent Encoding" is a technique used to
encode certain characters / strings within the URL. This can be handy when sending
information, such as a product information within the URL.
When Do We Need URL Encoding?
An example of where "URL Encoding" is required can be seen in such things as
Digg buttons. Here is a little snippet from the code used to submit stories to
Digg from external sites:
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...www.digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=example.com&title=TITLE&bodytext=...
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This URL contains a lot of information for the server-side script to process. If you
have any existing knowledge about server-side programming languages such as PHP, you will
know that the "?" after "submit" seperates the location of the file being run
(www.digg.com/submit), and the variables ("phase", "url", "title" etc...).
You have probably noticed by know that the variables are presented in pairs. For example
the variable "phase" should equal "2", the "url" should be "example.com" etc... It's pretty
self-explanatory really.
The problem comes when the variable are strings that contain more complex characters. For
example what if we wanted to have "My Dog's Video Blog - Funny!!!" as the variable "title".
You may say why not just add it like you have the others and do this:
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...com&title=My Dog's Video Blog - Funny!!!&bodytext=...
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This is in fact incorrect and will not work. "URL Encoding", or "Percentage Encoding"
solves this problem by giving a 3 character URL encoded value for characters such as "'"
and "!". The first character is always a "%", hence it's name "Percentage Encoding".
How Do I URL Encode?
There are various tools available online that will help you do this, such as our
JavaScript URL
Encoder / Decoder. Simply type in what you want to encode / decode and click
on the appropriate button.
Example of Correct URL Encoding
Here is the correct URL encoded version of the previous example where we were
trying to use the value of "My Dog's Video Blog - Funny!!!" for the variable
"title":
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...title=My%20Dog%27s%20Video%20Blog%20-%20Funny%21%21%21&bodytext=...
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