URL Encoder Decoder

What is URL encoding ?

URL encoding, also known as percent-encoding, is a mechanism for encoding information in a URL or URI (Uniform Resource Identifier). It is used to encode special characters, spaces and other non-ASCII characters in URLs so that they can be safely sent over the Internet as part of a request or a redirect.

URL encoding involves replacing certain characters in a URL with their corresponding percent-encoded values, which are represented by a '%' symbol followed by two hexadecimal digits. For example, the space character is encoded as "%20", the '#' character is encoded as "%23", and the '?' character is encoded as "%3F".

URL encoding is typically used in the query string of a URL, which is the part of a URL after the "?" character. For example, in the URL "http://example.com/search?q=hello+world", the query string is "q=hello+world", and the " + " character is encoded as "%2B".

URL encoding is also used in the path of a URL, which is the part of the URL that comes after the domain name and before the query string. For example, in the URL "http://example.com/search/hello%20world", the path is "/search/hello%20world", and the space character is encoded as "%20".

It's important to note that the most common URL encoding method is the UTF-8. Some other encoding methods are ASCII and ISO-8859-1.

In what situation we should encode URL ?

There are several situations where URL encoding is necessary:

1. When sending data in a URL : If you're sending data in a URL, such as in a query string or in the path of the URL, you'llneed to encode any special characters or spaces so that the URL can be properly interpreted by the server.
2. When using non - ASCII characters : URLs can only contain a limited set of characters, known as the ASCII character set.If you need to use non - ASCII characters, such as accented letters or characters from other languages, you'll need to encode them using URL encoding.
3. When using reserved characters : There are a number of characters that have special meaning in URLs, known as "reserved characters". These include characters like ?, /, #, &, and = . If you need to use these characters in a URL, you'll need to encode them using URL encoding.
4. When sending special characters in a form : When sending special characters like &, = and + through a form, it is better to encode them as these characters have special meanings in the URL.
5. When using spaces : Spaces are not allowed in URLs and will cause the URL to be invalid.If you need to use spaces, you should encode them as %20 in the URL.
6. When using cookies : If cookies contain special characters or non - ascii characters, it is better to encode them before sending them to the server.

By encoding the URL, we ensure that the URL will be properly understood by the server and that any data sent in the URLwill be properly interpreted.