Why we use UrlEncode

Question

I generally use the code _uri = Server.UrlEncode(_uri); before any page redirection with parameter values but I don't know the significance of using UrlEncode for this.I want to know the benefit of using UrlEncode.

it will encode any special characters like &,= in the values of the parameters — Ehsan Sajjad, Sep 01 '16 at 12:36
If you don't use it, you could have characters in your URL that are interpreted in the wrong way. It is somewhat like putting quotes around a string to tell the compiler/server not to worry about what's inside. — Shannon Holsinger, Sep 01 '16 at 12:39

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited Sep 01 '16 at 12:50

3

URLEncode returns a string in which all non-alphanumeric characters other than – (hyphen) _ (underscore), and . (period) have been replaced with a percent (%) sign followed by two hex digits that correspond to the charactor code and spaces encoded as plus (+) signs. Spaces can alternatively be encoded as %20. 20 is (16*2)+(1*0)=32 in decimal, which is the ASCII code for space.

Example

If You write

Response.Write(Server.URLEncode("http://www.technologycrowds.com"));

then Result will come like this

http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Etechnologycrowdst%2Ecom

edited Sep 01 '16 at 12:50

Ehsan Sajjad

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answered Sep 01 '16 at 12:40

Nitin Kumar

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Erm, no? This is not an explanation at all. How could it be helpful? – walther Sep 01 '16 at 12:50
you can refer to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4667942/why-should-i-use-urlencode – Nitin Kumar Sep 01 '16 at 12:59

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 01 '16 at 12:42

Consider a URL like this:

http://example.com/index.aspx?redirectUrl=http://example.com/index.aspx?someValue=123

How would you parse that URL? Which :// separates the protocol from the address? Which ? separates the address form the values? It would get confusing fast, because the characters being used in the query string value have significant meanings in URLs.

Instead, consider this version:

http://example.com/index.aspx?redirectUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Findex.aspx%3FsomeValue%3D123

Now none of the characters being used in the query string value have other significant URL meanings. It's just a single string, so the entire URL can be parsed easily.

URL-encoding values allows us to treat those values as values, and not as parts of the URL itself.

this should be the real answer at all. – Olgun Kaya Aug 07 '17 at 07:09 — Olgun Kaya, Aug 07 '17 at 07:09

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 01 '16 at 12:40

URL encoding ensures that all browsers will correctly transmit text in URL strings.Characters such as a question mark (?), ampersand (&), slash mark (/), and spaces might be truncated or corrupted by some browsers.

See Microsoft documentation: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/zttxte6w(v=vs.110).aspx

Why we use UrlEncode

3 Answers3

Example