URL Encode directive

The URL-ENCODE directive encodes a string to the application/x-www-form-urlencoded MIME format.

Syntax

The column contains a URL to be encoded.

Usage Notes

See https://www.w3.org/TR/html401/interact/forms.html#h-17.13.4.1 for details of these rules.

When encoding a string, these rules apply:

• The alphanumeric characters a through z, A through Z, and 0 through 9 remain unchanged

• The special characters ., -, *, and _ remain unchanged

• The space character is converted into a plus sign (+)

• All other characters are considered unsafe and are first converted into one or more bytes using an encoding scheme. Each byte is then represented by a 3-character string %xy, where xy is the two-digit hexadecimal representation of the byte. The recommended encoding scheme to use is UTF-8. However, for compatibility reasons, if an encoding is not specified, then the default encoding of the platform is used.

Note: Uses UTF-8 as the encoding scheme for the string.

See also the URL-DECODE directive.