Question

I thought I would be able to use the easy http_build_query to encode some GET parameters from an array, but apparently the enc_type seems to have been added in PHP 5.4. Unfortunately I’m on PHP 5.3.10.

Problem is that I need the parameters encoded with spaces being %20 and not +. Any good nice quick solutions of encoding the parameters correctly without using http_build_query?

Answer 1

Since the URL is encoded when http_build_query returns, so that + are always and only spaces, you can just chain it with str_replace:

$query = str_replace('+', '%20', http_build_query($arr));

If you don’t want to encode the ~ as well:

$query = str_replace(
    array('+', '%7E'), 
    array('%20', '~'), 
    http_build_query($arr)
);