php urlencode for linkedin

Question

Apparently Linkedin is funny about urlencoding the ~ in https://api.linkedin.com/v1/people/~ my problem is that i use an oauth library so I need to keep things consistent. is there a way to urlencode just part of the string so in case i have the ~ i can leave that out and put it back in at the same spot after encoding? thank you

Answer 1

Use rtrim() to remove ~ and then again append it:

<?php
  $URL = 'https://api.linkedin.com/v1/people/~';
  echo urlencode( rtrim ( $URL, '~' ) ) . '~';
?>

This outputs:

https%3A%2F%2Fapi.linkedin.com%2Fv1%2Fpeople%2F~

[EDIT]: After OP Clarification: If there are ~ in the middle somewhere

Use str_replace to put back the character ~:

<?php
   $URL = 'https://api.linkedin.com/v1/people/~:(id,first-name,last-name';
   echo str_replace('%7E','~',urlencode($URL));
?>

This outputs:

https%3A%2F%2Fapi.linkedin.com%2Fv1%2Fpeople%2F~%3A%28id%2Cfirst-name%2Clast-name

Answer 2

Encode the string, then decode the sequence only for the ~. If you want, you may define a constant that holds the URL-encoded value for that character and replace it.

define('TILDE_URLENCODE', urlencode('~')); // Or '%7E'
$url = str_replace(TILDE_URLENCODE, '~', urlencode($url));