How to encode a URL in Javascript?

Question

How do you safely encode a URL using Javascript such that it can be put into a GET string?

var myUrl = "http://example.com/index.html?param=1&anotherParam=2";
var myOtherUrl = "http://example.com/index.html?url=" + myUrl;

I assume that you need to encode the myUrl variable on that second line?

Answer 1

Try looking into encodeURI() and decodeURI().

Answer 2

Check out the built-in function encodeURIComponent(str) and encodeURI(str). In your case, this should work:

var myOtherUrl = "http://example.com/index.html?url=" + encodeURIComponent(myUrl);

Answer 3

You have 3 options:

• escape() will not encode: @*/+

• encodeURI() will not encode: ~!@#$&*()=:/,;?+'

• encodeURIComponent() will not encode: ~!*()'

But in your case, if you want to pass a url into a GET parameter of other page, you should use escape or encodeURIComponent, but not encodeURI.

Answer 4

be careful that escape converts non-ascii chars into its unicode escape sequences like %uxxx