🔗URL Encoder / Decoder
Encode and decode URLs instantly with our powerful online tool. Perfect for developers handling query strings, APIs, and web projects.
📝Common Examples
🔒 Encoding Examples:
hello world & morehello%20world%20%26%20morename@email.comname%40email.com🔓 Decoding Examples:
hello%20worldhello worldsearch%3Fq%3Dtestsearch?q=test🔍What is URL Encoding?
URL encoding converts special characters into a format that can be safely transmitted over the internet.
- • Spaces become %20
- • & becomes %26
- • @ becomes %40
- • ? becomes %3F
🎯Common Use Cases
- •API query parameters
- •Form data submission
- •URL generation in JavaScript
- •Debugging web requests
- •HTML form encoding
Frequently Asked Questions
🤔 What is the difference between encoding and decoding?
Encoding converts special characters to URL-safe format (e.g., space → %20), while decoding reverses this process (%20 → space).
🔒 Is my data safe?
Yes! All encoding/decoding happens entirely in your browser. No data is sent to our servers, ensuring complete privacy and security.
⚡ When should I use URL encoding?
Use URL encoding when passing data through URLs, especially for query parameters containing spaces, special characters, or non-ASCII characters.
📱 Does it work on mobile?
Absolutely! Our URL encoder/decoder is fully responsive and works perfectly on all devices, including smartphones and tablets.
Understanding URL Encoding: A Complete Guide
URL encoding, also known as percent encoding, is a mechanism for translating characters into a format that can be universally accepted and transmitted across the internet. URLs can only be sent using the ASCII character set, so any characters outside this set -- or characters that have special meaning within a URL -- must be converted into a valid ASCII format. This conversion replaces unsafe characters with a percent sign followed by two hexadecimal digits representing the character's ASCII code.
The standard governing URL encoding is defined in RFC 3986. According to this specification, characters in a URI are divided into two categories: reserved and unreserved. Unreserved characters include uppercase and lowercase letters (A-Z, a-z), digits (0-9), and four special characters: hyphen (-), period (.), underscore (_), and tilde (~). These characters do not need encoding. Reserved characters such as : / ? # [ ] @ ! $ & ' ( ) * + , ; = carry special syntactic meaning in URLs and must be percent-encoded when used outside their designated purpose.
How Percent Encoding Works
Percent encoding converts each byte of a character into the format %HH, where HH is the hexadecimal representation of the byte value. For example, a space character (ASCII 32) becomes %20 because 32 in hexadecimal is 20. Multi-byte UTF-8 characters produce multiple percent-encoded triplets.
In JavaScript, encodeURIComponent() encodes everything except unreserved characters, making it ideal for encoding query parameter values. In contrast, encodeURI() preserves characters that are legal within a full URI, such as colons and slashes. Choosing the wrong function is a common source of bugs in web applications.
When Is URL Encoding Needed?
URL encoding is essential in several scenarios that developers encounter regularly. When building query strings for API calls, any user-supplied data must be encoded to prevent injection of unintended parameters. Form submissions using the application/x-www-form-urlencoded content type automatically encode data, but manual encoding is needed when constructing URLs programmatically.
Other common scenarios include encoding file paths that contain spaces or special characters, handling internationalized domain names and URLs with non-Latin characters, passing redirect URLs as parameters, and embedding data in mailto links. Without proper encoding, browsers may misinterpret the URL structure, APIs may reject requests, and security vulnerabilities such as open redirect attacks or parameter pollution can arise.