Java equivalent to JavaScript's encodeURIComponent that produces identical output?

Answer 1

Using the javascript engine that is shipped with Java 6:

import javax.script.ScriptEngine;
import javax.script.ScriptEngineManager;

public class Wow
{
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception
    {
        ScriptEngineManager factory = new ScriptEngineManager();
        ScriptEngine engine = factory.getEngineByName("JavaScript");
        engine.eval("print(encodeURIComponent('\"A\" B ± \"'))");
    }
}

Output: %22A%22%20B%20%c2%b1%20%22

The case is different but it's closer to what you want.

Answer 2

Looking at the implementation differences, I see that:

MDC on encodeURIComponent():

• literal characters (regex representation): [-a-zA-Z0-9._*~'()!]

Java 1.4.2 documentation on URLEncoder:

• literal characters (regex representation): [-a-zA-Z0-9._*]
• the space character " " is converted into a plus sign "+".

So basically, to get the desired result, use URLEncoder.encode(s, "UTF-8") and then do some post-processing:

• replace all occurrences of "+" with "%20"
• replace all occurrences of "%xx" representing any of [~'()!] back to their literal counter-parts

Answer 3

This is the class I came up with in the end:

import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException;
import java.net.URLDecoder;
import java.net.URLEncoder;

/**
 * Utility class for JavaScript compatible UTF-8 encoding and decoding.
 * 
 * @see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/607176/java-equivalent-to-javascripts-encodeuricomponent-that-produces-identical-output
 * @author John Topley 
 */
public class EncodingUtil
{
  /**
   * Decodes the passed UTF-8 String using an algorithm that's compatible with
   * JavaScript's <code>decodeURIComponent</code> function. Returns
   * <code>null</code> if the String is <code>null</code>.
   *
   * @param s The UTF-8 encoded String to be decoded
   * @return the decoded String
   */
  public static String decodeURIComponent(String s)
  {
    if (s == null)
    {
      return null;
    }

    String result = null;

    try
    {
      result = URLDecoder.decode(s, "UTF-8");
    }

    // This exception should never occur.
    catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e)
    {
      result = s;  
    }

    return result;
  }

  /**
   * Encodes the passed String as UTF-8 using an algorithm that's compatible
   * with JavaScript's <code>encodeURIComponent</code> function. Returns
   * <code>null</code> if the String is <code>null</code>.
   * 
   * @param s The String to be encoded
   * @return the encoded String
   */
  public static String encodeURIComponent(String s)
  {
    String result = null;

    try
    {
      result = URLEncoder.encode(s, "UTF-8")
                         .replaceAll("\\+", "%20")
                         .replaceAll("\\%21", "!")
                         .replaceAll("\\%27", "'")
                         .replaceAll("\\%28", "(")
                         .replaceAll("\\%29", ")")
                         .replaceAll("\\%7E", "~");
    }

    // This exception should never occur.
    catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e)
    {
      result = s;
    }

    return result;
  }  

  /**
   * Private constructor to prevent this class from being instantiated.
   */
  private EncodingUtil()
  {
    super();
  }

Answer 4

I came up with another implementation documented at, http://blog.sangupta.com/2010/05/encodeuricomponent-and.html. The implementation can also handle Unicode bytes.