Question

So the site I’m working on has a filter system that operates by passing a key and value system through a querystring.

The whole site is going through a re-factor soon and I’m maintaining the existing site so before we discuss the RIGHT way to implement this, I just need ideas for changing my delimiter.

The current format is like this:

cf=<key>:<value>

The problem is, I’ve recently run into an issue because some of our new values for this filter contain : in them. I.e: cf=MO_AspectRatio:16:10

The value is being UrlEncoded, but the browsers are de-coding %3a into : on the fly because the : doesn’t inherently break the urls.

I need some suggestions for url-safe delimiters that aren’t :,-,_,&,? that makes sense. I’m not looking for a solution like () or something wild.

Answer 1

What about pipe?

cf=MO_AspectRatio|16:10