With this free tool you can URL encode or URL decode a string and vice versa.
URL encoding is generally used when the browser sends data to a web server. You can use our tool to automatically URL encode or decode a string of text for worldwide interoperability.
Step #1: Copy and paste the URL or string of text that you wish to encode or decode.
Step #2: Encode the text: ‘Reserved symbols’ will be transformed into '%' symbols and two-digit hexadecimal values.
or
Decode the text: The string of gibberish will be stripped out and the text will be transformed into a readable format.
URL encoding and URL decoding, commonly referred to as 'percent encoding', change a string so that it respects the regulations imposed by the Uniform Resource Locators specification. The RFC 1738 URL specification dictates that only a small set of characters can be used in a URL structure.
These characters are: upper-case letters (A to Z), lower-case letters (a to z), digits (0 to 9), as well as several ‘reserved’ symbols (dollar sign, underscore, period, closing/opening bracket, single quote, asterisk, exclamation, plus sign, and hyphen).
All offending characters must be replaced by a %, followed by the two-digit hexadecimal value that represents the symbol in the ISO character set (e.g. @ becomes %40); otherwise you might encounter problems while trying to pass information through an URL.
In the past, people would manually URL encode special characters into their encoding string. This was a tedious task that would generally result in human error. We built this tool to help you URL encode/decode links in a matter of seconds.
URL encoding refers to encoding certain characters in a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). URL encoding is a two-step process: the character string is encoded into a sequence of bytes and then each byte that isn’t an ASCII letter or a digit is also converted to a hexadecimal value of the byte.
Sometimes reserved characters have special meanings, and URL encoding allows them to maintain their special character sequences. In other words, if a reserved character has a reserved purpose in a certain context, the URL scheme dictates that it is URL encoded.
A URL encode converts the character into its corresponding byte value in ASCII. This new value (two digits preceded by a %) will be used in the URL instead of the reserved character.
Here is a list of reserved characters, their purpose and encoding:
Character | Purpose in URL | Character encode |
---|---|---|
/ | Used to separate domains & directories | %2F |
# | Separates anchors | %23 |
+ | Indicates a space | %2B |
% | Indicates an encoded character | %25 |
@ | Separate user & pass details from domain | %40 |
: | Separate protocol from address | %3B |
<space> | Space, not recommended in URLs | + or %20 |
? | Separate query string | %3F |
Strictly speaking, you should always URL encode, especially if your link or text contains non-alphabetic characters, numbers or special characters used outside their normal context.
The unreserved characters (upper-case and lower-case letters, digits, and '-', '_', '.', '~' symbols) can be encoded, but should not be encoded.
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