URL Encoding Guide: Percent-Encoding for Developers
Complete guide to URL encoding: which characters must be encoded, the %XX format, reserved vs unreserved characters, and common mistakes to avoid.
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Tags: encoding, url, developer-tools
URL Encoding Guide: Percent-Encoding for Developers URLs can only contain a limited set of characters. The moment you put a space, an ampersand, or a non-ASCII character into a URL, things break — silently and in ways that are hard to debug. URL encoding (formally called percent-encoding) is the mechanism that solves this, and understanding it at the RFC level will save you hours of head-scratching. This guide covers what URL encoding is, which characters must be encoded and why, and the mistakes developers make most often. --- What is URL Encoding? URL encoding converts characters that are not allowed — or have special meaning — in a URL into a safe format: a percent sign followed by two hexadecimal digits representing the character's byte value. A space becomes . An ampersand becomes .…
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