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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T13:51:52+00:00

In some javascript, I have: var url = find.aspx? + location= + encodeURIComponent( address

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In some javascript, I have:

var url = "find.aspx?" + "location=" + encodeURIComponent( address );
alert( url );
location.href = url;

where the value of address is the string “Seattle, WA”.

In the alert I see

find.aspx?Seattle%2C%20WA

as I expect.

But on the server side, when I look at Request.Url, the relevant substring I see is

find.aspx?Seattle, WA

And in the Firefox url window I see

find.aspx?location=Seattle%2C WA

So I’m getting three different representations whereas I would expect that in all three places I should see what I see in the alert. My expectation is that the url I assign to location.href should show up as-is in the browser url window, and should be passed as-is to the server in Request.Url (and I would need to decode the values on the server before using them). What’s happening?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Firefox converts certain encoded characters into their literal forms as a way to be friendly to users. It will also convert spaces typed into the address bar into %20 for the server.

    Update: The reason Firefox doesn’t display the comma unencoded is because commas are allowed in URLs, but spaces are not, so it knows that a space is going to be unambiguously interpreted, whereas the pre-encoded comma is different from a non-encoded comma to some servers. see: Can I use commas in a URL?

    ASP is probably trying to help you out by auto-un-encoding the string for you.

    Update: It looks like ASP.NET unencodes Request.Url for you by default, as mentioned here: QueryString malformed after URLDecode They also mention that you can use HttpRequest.Url.Query to access the un-decoded version.

    The alert is the only thing not doing any “magic” for you.

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