Question

I tried using Ruby’s url_encode (doc here.)

It encodes http://www.google.com as http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com. But it turns out that I cannot open the latter via a browser. If so, what’s the use of this function? What is it useful for, when the URL that it encodes can’t even be opened?

Answer 1

A typical use is the HTTP GET method, in where you need a query String.

Query String 1:

valudA=john&valueB=john2

Actual value server get:

• valueA : “john”

• valueB : “john2”

url_encode is used to make the key-value pair enable to store the string which includes some non-ASCII encoded character such as space and special character.

Suppose the valueB will store my name, code 4 j, you need to encode it because there are some spaces.

url_encode("code 4 j")
code%204%20j

Query string 2:

valueA=john&valueB=code%204%20j

Actual value server get:

• valueA: “john”
• valueB: “code 4 j”