why PHP decoding url '+' character as space?

Question

Here is my javascript jquery ajax function to send data. Here i append my data with url to send it to server.

 url = "/login/auth/";
        $.ajax({
            dataType: "json",
            url: url+encodeURIComponent("a+b+2"),
            success: function (data, textStatus, jqXHR) {
                if (data.login === false)
                {
                    alert("Invalid Password");
                } else {
                    $('.login').hide();
                    $("body").append(data.html);
                }

            }
        });

In PHP

 if (isset($_GET['r']))
 {
        echo 'r='.$_GET['r'];
        return explode('/',rtrim($_GET['r'], '/'));
    }

PHP decoding it as login/auth/a b 2

url via ajax request is login/auth/%7B%22pwd%22%3A%22a%2Bb%2B2%22%7D — ganapathy888
– ganapathy888, Commented Oct 21, 2015 at 21:56
login/auth/%7B%22pwd%22%3A%22a%2Bb%2B2%22%7D should not result in login/auth/a b 2, even with double decoding. Are you sure you test the right url and you're not getting a page from cache? — GolezTrol
– GolezTrol, Commented Oct 21, 2015 at 23:14

GolezTrol · Accepted Answer · 2015-10-21 21:46:38Z

1

It's because a + symbol in a url means a space. It's basically a shorter (and more readable) version of %20.

To send a + encode it as you would with any other special character. An encoded + is %2B. But actually, encodeURIComponent should do that already. Did you maybe decode the url twice in PHP?

edited Oct 21, 2015 at 21:46

answered Oct 21, 2015 at 21:45

GolezTrol

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4 Comments

ganapathy888 Over a year ago

then how do i send + symbol as data to server

GolezTrol Over a year ago

See edited answer, but since you already use encodeURIComponent, I'm not sure what could be the problem. Note though, that PHP will automatically decode the url once, so you don't need url_decode in PHP to decode (parts of) your URL yourself. If you need debugging help with the PHP part, please add that code to the question too.

GolezTrol Over a year ago

Weird issue. I've tried your code in a small script on my localhost WAMP. With ?r=a+b+c it echoes a b c, but with ?r=a%2Bb%2Bc it echoes a+b+c, like it should. Maybe it's some configuration or a bug, but I can't find any reference of it, and I can't reproduce it.

Barmar Over a year ago

I suspect the extra decode may be related to the Apache rewrite rule.

ganapathy888 · Accepted Answer · 2015-10-22 21:30:59Z

0

changing apache rewrite rule flag to [NE,B,L,QSA] solved the problem. Here B(Back Reference) flag is set to avoid decoding of the url component.

answered Oct 22, 2015 at 21:30

ganapathy888

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