urlencode

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

urlencodeURL-encodes string

Description

urlencode(string $string): string

This function is convenient when encoding a string to be used in a query part of a URL, as a convenient way to pass variables to the next page.

Parameters

string

The string to be encoded.

Return Values

Returns a string in which all non-alphanumeric characters except -_. have been replaced with a percent (%) sign followed by two hex digits and spaces encoded as plus (+) signs. It is encoded the same way that the posted data from a WWW form is encoded, that is the same way as in application/x-www-form-urlencoded media type. This differs from the » RFC 3986 encoding (see rawurlencode()) in that for historical reasons, spaces are encoded as plus (+) signs.

Examples

Example #1 urlencode() example

<?php
$userinput
= 'Data123!@-_ +';
echo
"UserInput: $userinput\n";
echo
'<a href="mycgi?foo=', urlencode($userinput), '">';
?>

The above example will output:

UserInput: Data123!@-_ +
<a href="mycgi?foo=Data123%21%40-_+%2B">

Example #2 urlencode() and htmlentities() example

<?php
$foo
= 'Data123!@-_ +';
$bar = "Not the same content as $foo";
echo
"foo: $foo\n";
echo
"bar: $bar\n";
$query_string = 'foo=' . urlencode($foo) . '&bar=' . urlencode($bar);
echo
'<a href="mycgi?' . htmlentities($query_string) . '">';
?>

The above example will output:

foo: Data123!@-_ +
bar: Not the same content as Data123!@-_ +
<a href="mycgi?foo=Data123%21%40-_+%2B&amp;bar=Not+the+same+content+as+Data123%21%40-_+%2B">

Notes

Note:

Be careful about variables that may match HTML entities. Things like &amp, &copy and &pound are parsed by the browser and the actual entity is used instead of the desired variable name. This is an obvious hassle that the W3C has been telling people about for years. The reference is here: » http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/appendix/notes.html#h-B.2.2.

PHP supports changing the argument separator to the W3C-suggested semi-colon through the arg_separator .ini directive. Unfortunately most user agents do not send form data in this semi-colon separated format. A more portable way around this is to use &amp; instead of & as the separator. You don't need to change PHP's arg_separator for this. Leave it as &, but simply encode your URLs using htmlentities() or htmlspecialchars().

See Also

add a note

User Contributed Notes 18 notes

up
65
davis dot peixoto at gmail dot com
14 years ago
urlencode function and rawurlencode are mostly based on RFC 1738.

However, since 2005 the current RFC in use for URIs standard is RFC 3986.

Here is a function to encode URLs according to RFC 3986.

<?php
function myUrlEncode($string) {
$entities = array('%21', '%2A', '%27', '%28', '%29', '%3B', '%3A', '%40', '%26', '%3D', '%2B', '%24', '%2C', '%2F', '%3F', '%25', '%23', '%5B', '%5D');
$replacements = array('!', '*', "'", "(", ")", ";", ":", "@", "&", "=", "+", "$", ",", "/", "?", "%", "#", "[", "]");
return
str_replace($entities, $replacements, urlencode($string));
}
?>
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2
materialsmoke at gmail dot com
1 year ago
this function will encode the URL while preserving the functionality of URL so you can copy and paste it in the browser
```
function urlEncode($url) {
$parsedUrl = parse_url($url);

$encodedScheme = urlencode($parsedUrl['scheme']);
$encodedHost = urlencode($parsedUrl['host']);

$encodedPath = implode('/', array_map('urlencode', explode('/', $parsedUrl['path'])));
if (isset($parsedUrl['query'])) {
$encodedQuery = '?' . urlencode($parsedUrl['query']);
} else {
$encodedQuery = '';
}

return "{$encodedScheme}://{$encodedHost}{$encodedPath}{$encodedQuery}";
}
```
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9
temu92 at gmail dot com
15 years ago
I needed encoding and decoding for UTF8 urls, I came up with these very simple fuctions. Hope this helps!

<?php
function url_encode($string){
return
urlencode(utf8_encode($string));
}

function
url_decode($string){
return
utf8_decode(urldecode($string));
}
?>
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8
daniel+php at danielnorton dot com
15 years ago
Don't use urlencode() or urldecode() if the text includes an email address, as it destroys the "+" character, a perfectly valid email address character.

Unless you're certain that you won't be encoding email addresses AND you need the readability provided by the non-standard "+" usage, instead always use use rawurlencode() or rawurldecode().
up
8
omid at omidsakhi dot com
14 years ago
I needed a function in PHP to do the same job as the complete escape function in Javascript. It took me some time not to find it. But findaly I decided to write my own code. So just to save time:

<?php
function fullescape($in)
{
$out = '';
for (
$i=0;$i<strlen($in);$i++)
{
$hex = dechex(ord($in[$i]));
if (
$hex=='')
$out = $out.urlencode($in[$i]);
else
$out = $out .'%'.((strlen($hex)==1) ? ('0'.strtoupper($hex)):(strtoupper($hex)));
}
$out = str_replace('+','%20',$out);
$out = str_replace('_','%5F',$out);
$out = str_replace('.','%2E',$out);
$out = str_replace('-','%2D',$out);
return
$out;
}
?>

It can be fully decoded using the unscape function in Javascript.
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1
ahrensberg at gmail dot com
17 years ago
Like "Benjamin dot Bruno at web dot de" earlier has writen, you can have problems with encode strings with special characters to flash. Benjamin write that:

<?php
function flash_encode ($input)
{
return
rawurlencode(utf8_encode($input));
}
?>

... could do the problem. Unfortunately flash still have problems with read some quotations, but with this one:

<?php
function flash_encode($string)
{
$string = rawurlencode(utf8_encode($string));

$string = str_replace("%C2%96", "-", $string);
$string = str_replace("%C2%91", "%27", $string);
$string = str_replace("%C2%92", "%27", $string);
$string = str_replace("%C2%82", "%27", $string);
$string = str_replace("%C2%93", "%22", $string);
$string = str_replace("%C2%94", "%22", $string);
$string = str_replace("%C2%84", "%22", $string);
$string = str_replace("%C2%8B", "%C2%AB", $string);
$string = str_replace("%C2%9B", "%C2%BB", $string);

return
$string;
}
?>

... should solve this problem.
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0
izhankhalib at gmail dot com
10 years ago
Below is our jsonform source code in mongo db which consists a lot of double quotes. we are able to pass this source code to the ajax form submit function by using php urlencode :

<script type="text/javascript">
$(function() {
// Generate a form using jquery.dfrom
$("#myform").dform({

"html":[
{
"type":"p",
"html":"Patient Record"
},
{
"name":"patient.name.first",
"id":"txt-patient.name.first",
"caption":"first name",
"type":"text",
},
{

"name":"patient.name.last",
"id":"txt-patient.name.last",
"caption":"last name",
"type":"text",
},
{
"type" : "submit",
}

]
});
});
</script>
<form id="myform">

<?php
//get the json source code from the mongodb
$jsonform= urlencode($this->data['Post']['jsonform']);

?>
//AJAX SUBMIT FORM
<script type="text/javascript">
$('#myform').submit(function(){


// passing the variable fro PHP to javascript
var thejsonform="<?php echo $jsonform ?>";

//var fname = $('input#fname').val();
var dataString = "jsonform=" + thejsonform ;

$.ajax({
type: "POST",
// url: "test1.php",
data: dataString,
success: function() {

}
});


return false;
});
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-1
youhanasobhy15 at gmail dot com
6 years ago
Keep in mind that, if you prepare URL for a connection and used the urlencode on some parameters and didn't use it on the rest of parameters, it will not be decoded automatically at the destination position if the not encoded parameters have special characters that urlencode encodes it.

example :

$xml = simplexml_load_file("http://www.testing.com?me=test&first=".urlencode('dummy string')."&second=here is the string");

here is the second parameter has spaces which urlencode converts it to (+).

after using this URL, the server will discover that the second parameter has not been encoded , then the server will not decode it automatically.

this took more than 2 hours to be discovered and hope to save your time.
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-1
root at jusme dot org
16 years ago
I'm running PHP version 5.0.5 and urlencode() doesn't seem to encode the "#" character, although the function's description says it encodes "all non-alphanumeric" characters. This was a particular problem for me when trying to open local files with a "#" in the filename as Firefox will interpret this as an anchor target (for better or worse). It seems a manual str_replace is required unless this was fixed in a future PHP version.

Example:

$str = str_replace("#", "%23", $str);
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-3
david winiecki gmail
9 years ago
Since PHP 5.3.0, urlencode and rawurlencode also differ in that rawurlencode does not encode ~ (tilde), while urlencode does.
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-3
kL
18 years ago
Apache's mod_rewrite and mod_proxy are unable to handle urlencoded URLs properly - http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=34602

If you need to use any of these modules and handle paths that contain %2F or %3A (and few other encoded special url characters), you'll have use a different encoding scheme.

My solution is to replace "%" with "'".
<?php
function urlencode($u)
{
return
str_replace(array("'",'%'),array('%27',"'"),urlencode($u));
}

function
urldecode($u)
{
return
urldecode(strtr($u,"'",'%'));
}
?>
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-4
neugey at cox dot net
20 years ago
Be careful when encoding strings that came from simplexml in PHP 5. If you try to urlencode a simplexml object, the script tanks.

I got around the problem by using a cast.

$newValue = urlencode( (string) $oldValue );
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-5
frx dot apps at gmail dot com
14 years ago
I wrote this simple function that creates a GET query (for URLS) from an array:

<?php
function encode_array($args)
{
if(!
is_array($args)) return false;
$c = 0;
$out = '';
foreach(
$args as $name => $value)
{
if(
$c++ != 0) $out .= '&';
$out .= urlencode("$name").'=';
if(
is_array($value))
{
$out .= urlencode(serialize($value));
}else{
$out .= urlencode("$value");
}
}
return
$out . "\n";
}
?>

If there are arrays within the $args array, they will be serialized before being urlencoded.

Some examples:
<?php
echo encode_array(array('foo' => 'bar')); // foo=bar
echo encode_array(array('foo&bar' => 'some=weird/value')); // foo%26bar=some%3Dweird%2Fvalue
echo encode_array(array('foo' => 1, 'bar' => 'two')); // foo=1&bar=two
echo encode_array(array('args' => array('key' => 'value'))); // args=a%3A1%3A%7Bs%3A3%3A%22key%22%3Bs%3A5%3A%22value%22%3B%7D
?>
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-5
R Mortimer
19 years ago
Do not let the browser auto encode an invalid URL. Not all browsers perform the same encodeing. Keep it cross browser do it server side.
up
-4
admin at server dot net
5 years ago
urlencode corresponds to the definition for application/x-www-form-urlencoded in RFC 1866 (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1866#section-8.2.1), and not for url encoded parts in URI. Use only rawurlencode for encode raw URI parts (e.g. query/search part)!
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-4
in reply to "kL"
17 years ago
kL's example is very bugged since it loops itself and the encode function is two-way.

Why do you replace all %27 through ' in the same string in that you replace all ' through %27?

Lets say I have a string: Hello %27World%27. It's a nice day.
I get: Hello Hello 'World'. It%27s a nice day.

With other words that solution is pretty useless.

Solution:
Just replace ' through %27 when encoding
Just replace %27 through ' when decoding. Or just use url_decode.
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-4
no_gravity
4 years ago
I think the description does not exactly match what the function does:

Returns a string in which all non-alphanumeric characters
except -_. have been replaced with a percent (%) sign followed
by two hex digits and spaces encoded as plus (+) signs.

urlencode('ö') gives me '%C3%B6'. So more then just a percent sign followed by two hex digits.
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-4
GeorgeOxymn
3 years ago
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