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Asked: 2026-06-04T01:44:27+00:00

Say I have a simple form like this: <html> <head> <meta http-equiv=Content-Type content=text/html; charset=utf-8

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Say I have a simple form like this:

<html>
  <head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id="search">
      <form method="GET" action="/super-action">
        <input type="text" name="q" />
      </form>
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

with an input like: @tags "Cinéma Whatever"

a form GET request results in a url that looks like: /super-action?q=%40tags+"Cinéma+Whatever"

Now I want to reproduce that with javascript in location.hash, with a pound sign instead of a slash, like: /super-action#q=%40tags+"Cinéma+Whatever"

But with the available functions, I get there results:

  • escape(input): @tags%20%22Cin%E9ma%20Whatever%22
  • encodeURI(input): @tags%20%22Cin%C3%A9ma%20Whatever%22
  • encodeURIComponent(input): %40tags%20%22Cin%C3%A9ma%20Whatever%22
  • $(form).serialize(), without q=: %40tags+%22Cin%C3%A9ma+Whatever%22

The question: How can I make an input value, like @tags "Cinéma Whatever", look like what a form GET request would do: %40tags+"Cinéma+Whatever" using javascript?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    According to RFC 1738, /super-action?q=%40tags+"Cinéma+Whatever" is not valid inside an URL:

    Thus, only alphanumerics, the special characters “$-_.+!*'(),”, and
    reserved characters used for their reserved purposes may be used
    unencoded within a URL.

    That means that you can’t produce a valid URL with that substring in it. You must encode the special characters " and é, otherwise the resulting string is not a URL.

    The reason why you think this is valid might be that your browser plays tricks on you: It could be displaying the URL in partially encoded form to make it easier to read in the address bar. Try using a protocol analyzer like Wireshark to inspect the actual URL path sent across the network.

    UPDATE: I quickly confirmed this, the HTTP header sent in reaction to a form submit is the following:

    GET /?q=%40tags+%22Cin%C3%A9ma+Whatever%22 HTTP/1.1

    So it is first UTF-8 encoded and then URL encoded.

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