Question

Is there a standard API call (or set of calls) that allows me to encode a list of key/value pairs into a SINGLE request parameter? Somehow I have never done this before.

What I am looking for is to generate a URL which encodes an arbitrarily long string of parameters that will be decoded by the indicated page. For example:

http://someth.ing/page?params=xxxxxxxxxxxxx

where the xxxxxxx is the encoded form of a

Map<String, String>

or if that isn’t available then a

List<String>

I know my alternative is to just encode each key as its own request parameter, but that creates a lot of parsing work on the decoding side I would rather avoid. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

You could just convert to/from JSON. You could use among others Google Gson for this:

Map<String, String> data = createItSomehow();
String dataAsJson = new Gson().toJson(data);
String url = "http://example.com/some?data=" + URLEncoder.encode(data, "UTF-8");
// ...

And in the other side, assuming a servlet:

String dataAsJson = request.getParameter("data");
Map<String, String> data = new Gson().fromJson(json, new TypeToken<Map<String, String>>(){}.getType());
// ...