Encoding parameters values in a URL with Java

Question

I need to encode the parameters values in an URL. If I use following:

URLEncoder.encode(url, "UTF-8");

for a URL like this: http://localhost:8080/...

it will encode "://" etc. What I need is the encoding only for the values of the parameters starting from all the URL string. So in this case:

http://localhost/?q=blah&d=blah

I want encoded only the "blah" in the 2 parameters values (for n parameters of course).

What's your best way?

Thanks

Randomize

Andrei LED · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-21 16:24:01Z

5

You're using URLEncoder in a wrong way. You're supposed to encode every parameter value separately and then assemble the url together.

For example


String url = "http://localhost/?q=" + URLEncoder.encode ("blah", "UTF-8") + "&d=" + URLEncoder.encode ("blah", "UTF-8");

answered Sep 21, 2011 at 16:24

Andrei LED

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8 Comments

Randomize Over a year ago

Yes I know it, the problem is that I got an URL already "done" and I have no way to change the code that generate it

Andrei LED Over a year ago

Why then do you need to encode it? Does it contain non ASCII characters?

Dave Newton Over a year ago

Then you'll need to build a URL and get the params (or split on the first ? if you're confident of the URL's validity), split them on & (if you don't want that encoded), encode them, then rebuild it.

Andrei LED Over a year ago

Indeed if the provided url is valid your only way is to parse it and then encode properly. But it's not an encoding, it's fixing an url.

Andrei LED Over a year ago

And of course there'll be problems if some parameter value contained one of characters '?', '&', '='. You may even need to decode parameter values after successful split and then encode them as you need.

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Saket · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-21 16:25:31Z

2

For a URL like http://localhost/hello/sample?param=bla, you could use this (from Java's java.net.URI class):

URI uri = new URI("http", "localhost", "/hello/sample", "param=bla", null);
String url = uri.toASCIIString();

answered Sep 21, 2011 at 16:25

Saket

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2 Comments

Andrei LED Over a year ago

this way you need to preassemble the query string using URLEncoder to encode special characters. And as it turns out Randomize has whole url as input, not its parts.

Saket Over a year ago

Well, the URL can be easily broken (split) into such parts and passed along.

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