Encode to URL-encoded format Online
About URL Decode and Encode
Welcome to URL Decode and Encode, your ultimate online tool for effortlessly encoding and decoding URLs. Our platform is designed to simplify the process of URL encoding and decoding, allowing you to convert data to a URL-safe format or return it to a human-readable state with just a click.
What is URL Encoding?
URL encoding, often referred to as percent-encoding, is a crucial mechanism used in the formation of Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). While commonly known as URL encoding, this technique applies broadly within the URI framework, encompassing both Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) and Uniform Resource Names (URNs). It transforms characters into a format that can be transmitted over the internet, making it essential for web applications and data submission in HTTP requests.
Features and Advanced Options
Our tool supports multiple character sets, including UTF-8, ASCII, and various ISO formats, ensuring compatibility with your needs. You can customize:
- Character Set: Our website utilizes the UTF-8 character set by default for transmitting your input data. If you need to convert your data to a different character set before encoding, you can adjust this option. Keep in mind that for text data, the encoding scheme doesn't include the character set.
- Newline Separators: Unix and Windows systems use different characters for line breaks. Before encoding, your data will be adjusted to replace these characters based on your selected option. Select between Unix (LF) and Windows (CRLF) line breaks to suit your data.
- Unique Each Line Encoding: Newline characters will also be converted to their percent-encoded equivalents. You can use this option if you want to encode several separate data entries that are divided by line breaks.
- Split lines into 76 characters chunks: The encoded data will turn into a continuous string without any whitespace. If you'd like to split it into multiple lines, be sure to select this option. The character limit is set by the MIME (RFC 2045) specification, which requires that each encoded line is no longer than 76 characters.
Safety and Security
We prioritize your privacy. All communications are secured with SSL encryption, and we do not store or inspect your uploaded data. Data is not stored on our servers. Your data are deleted immediately after processing, ensuring your information remains confidential.
Completely Free and User-Friendly
Our URL encoding and decoding tool is entirely free to use. Say goodbye to complicated software installations—perform your encoding tasks directly from your browser.
Details of the URL encoding
Types of URI characters
In a URI, characters fall into two categories: reserved and unreserved, along with percent characters used for encoding. Reserved characters can have special meanings; for instance, forward slashes are used to separate different sections of a URL (or more broadly, a URI). On the other hand, unreserved characters do not carry any special significance. When using percent-encoding, reserved characters are represented by specific sequences. The definitions of reserved and unreserved characters, as well as the contexts in which certain reserved characters are significant, have evolved with each revision of the specifications that regulate URIs and URI schemes.
| ! | * | ' | ( | ) | ; | : | @ | & | = | + | $ | , | / | ? | # | [ | ] |
|---|
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | F | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
| a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | i | j | k | l | m | n | o | p | q | r | s | t | u | v | w | x | y | z |
| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | - | _ | . | ~ |
Percent-Encoding Reserved Characters
When a character from the reserved set has a specific meaning in a certain context, it may need to be percent-encoded if a URI scheme requires it for a different purpose. Percent-encoding involves converting the character into its corresponding ASCII byte value and then expressing that value as two hexadecimal digits, prefixed by a percent sign ('%'). For non-ASCII characters, the character is usually converted to its UTF-8 byte sequence, with each byte represented in the same way.
For instance, the reserved character '/' serves as a delimiter in the 'path' component of a URI. If a URI scheme specifies that '/' should be included in a path segment, it should be replaced with '%2F' (or '%2f') in that segment instead of using the character directly.
| ! | # | $ | & | ' | ( | ) | * | + | , | / | : | ; | = | ? | @ | [ | ] |
| %21 | %23 | %24 | %26 | %27 | %28 | %29 | %2A | %2B | %2C | %2F | %3A | %3B | %3D | %3F | %40 | %5B | %5D |
Reserved characters that do not have a specific purpose in a given context can also be percent-encoded, but they are treated the same as other characters in terms of meaning.
For instance, in the 'query' component of a URI (the part following the '?' character), the '/' character is categorized as reserved but typically has no special function unless specified by a particular URI scheme. Therefore, it does not need to be percent-encoded when it lacks a reserved purpose.
URIs that differ solely based on whether a reserved character is percent-encoded are usually not considered equivalent, meaning they do not point to the same resource. However, this only applies if the reserved characters in question do not have a designated purpose. The specific rules regarding reserved characters are defined by individual URI schemes.
Percent-Encoding Unreserved Characters
Characters in the unreserved set do not require percent-encoding.
URIs that only differ based on whether an unreserved character is percent-encoded are considered equivalent by definition. However, in practice, URI processors might not always handle them the same way. For instance, '%41' should be treated the same as 'A' (since '%41' is the percent-encoding for 'A'), and '%7E' should be equivalent to '~'. Despite this, some systems may distinguish between them. To ensure maximum compatibility, it's recommended that URI producers avoid percent-encoding unreserved characters.
Percent-Encoding the (%) Percent Character
The percent ('%') character is used to indicate percent-encoded octets, so when you need to include it as data in a URI, it must be percent-encoded as '%25'.
Percent-Encoding Arbitrary Data
Many URI schemes require representing various types of arbitrary data, such as IP addresses or filesystem paths, as parts of a URI. While the specifications of URI schemes ideally provide a clear mapping between URI characters and all possible data values, this is often not the case.
Binary Data
Following the publication of RFC 1738 in 1994, it was established that schemes allowing binary data representation in a URI must split data into 8-bit bytes and percent-encode each byte accordingly. For instance, the byte value 0F (in hexadecimal) must be represented as '%0F', while the byte value 41 can be shown as either 'A' or '%41'. Generally, it is preferred to use unencoded characters for alphanumeric characters and other unreserved characters as this creates shorter URLs.
Character Data
The method of percent-encoding binary data has often been inappropriately extended to character-based data without clear guidelines. In the early days of the World Wide Web, when working with characters from the ASCII set, it was generally assumed that characters and their corresponding byte values could be treated interchangeably for percent-encoding. This assumption was mostly harmless at the time. However, as the need to represent characters beyond the ASCII range grew, URI schemes and protocols frequently lacked standardized rules for preparing character data for URIs.
As a result, web applications started using various multi-byte and non-ASCII-compatible encodings for percent-encoding, which introduced ambiguities and made it harder to interpret URIs reliably.
For instance, many URI schemes and protocols based on RFC 1738 and 2396 assume that data characters will be converted to bytes using some unspecified encoding before being represented in a URI as unreserved characters or percent-encoded bytes. If a scheme does not specify the encoding used or conflicts with the ASCII-based percent-encoding of reserved and unreserved characters, the URI becomes difficult to interpret correctly. Some schemes neglect to address encoding entirely, suggesting instead that data characters should map directly to URI characters. This leaves users to determine how to percent-encode characters that do not fall into the reserved or unreserved categories.
| newline | space | " | % | - | . | < | > | \ | ^ | _ | ` | { | | | } | ~ |
| %0A or %0D or %0D%0A | %20 | %22 | %25 | %2D | %2E | %3C | %3E | %5C | %5E | %5F | %60 | %7B | %7C | %7D | %7E |
A Brief History of URL Encoding
URL encoding has its roots in the early days of the internet, formalized with the publication of RFC 1738 in 1994. This specification laid the groundwork for encoding arbitrary data into a format suitable for URIs, enabling the representation of special characters and ensuring that data is transmitted correctly. Over the years, as web standards evolved, so did the practices surrounding percent-encoding, adapting to include a wider range of characters and encoding schemes, particularly with the rise of non-ASCII characters and multi-byte encodings. This evolution has made URL encoding an essential skill for web developers, ensuring that data remains intact and correctly interpreted across diverse platforms and protocols.