Question

I have an issue where even if I replace the spaces to %20 and get this content the ultimate url the browser gets turns the “%20” into “%2520”

Here’s my code, any suggestions to get this to work? it seems easy but I’m stuck :/

<?php
//$_GET['song'] will contain a song name with spaces
$song = str_replace(array("%20", "&", "?" , "/"), array(" ", "", "", ""), $_GET['song']);

// I use this to check how the GET 'song' looks after the str_replace
$list = "http://www.lyrdb.com/lookup.php?q=" . $song . "&for=fullt";
echo "list url is " . $list . "<hr>";

$content = file_get_contents("http://www.lyrdb.com/lookup.php?q=" . str_replace(" ", "%20", $song) . "&for=fullt");

echo $content;
?>

if you go to http://webservices.lyrdb.com/lookup.php?q=red%20hot%20chili%20peppers&for=fullt The result should output a list of lyric codes.

When i go to my website /?song=red hot chili peppers , it too converts spaces to %20 ‘s but if it seems the browser converts the %’s to %25.

Can someone help me out?

Answer 1

Always use urlencode() for a single parameter, or http_build_query() for multiple parameters in the HTTP query string:

$song = $_GET['song']);
$url = "http://www.lyrdb.com/lookup.php?for=fullt&q=";
$content = file_get_contents($url . urlencode($song));

or

$url = "http://www.lyrdb.com/lookup.php";
$query = ['for' => 'fullt', 'q' => $song];
$content = file_get_contents($url . '?' . http_build_query($query));