Question

I am doing the following:

String url = String.format(WEBSERVICE_WITH_CITYSTATE, cityName, stateName);
String urlUtf8 = new String(url.getBytes(), "UTF8");
Log.d(TAG, "URL: [" + urlUtf8 + "]");
Reader reader = WebService.queryApi(url);

The output that I am looking for is essentially to get the city name with blanks (e.g., “Overland Park“) to be formatted as Overland%20Park.

Is it this the best way?

Answer 1

Assuming you are actually wanting to encode your string for use in a URL (ie, “Overland Park” can also be formatted as “Overland+Park”) you want URLEncoder.encode(url, "UTF-8"). Other unsafe characters will be converted to the %xx format you are asking for.