How to encode utf8 as url like browser does in PHP?

Question

When entering this url into the Browser: http://www.google.com/?q=ä

The sent url is actually http://www.google.com/?q=%C3%A4

I want to do the same conversion using Php - how to do that?

What I tried:

$url = 'http://www.google.com/?q=ä'; //utf8 encoded echo rawurlencode($url); //gives http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F%3Fq%3D%C3%A4 $u = parse_url($url); echo $url['scheme'].'://'.$url['host'].$url['path'].'?'.rawurlencode($url['query']); //gives http://www.google.com/?q%3D%C3%A4

The above url ist just a simple example, I need a generic solution that also works with

http://www.example.com/ä http://www.example.com/ä?foo=ä&bar=ö http://www.example.com/Περιβάλλον?abc=Περιβάλλον

The answer provided here is not generic enough: How to encode URL using php like browsers do

I have not tried it out yet, but this approach seems to provide what you are searching: stackoverflow.com/questions/4929584/encodeuri-in-php — linqu
– linqu, Commented Mar 15, 2013 at 8:04
The linked duplicate is not php specific and doesn't contain a answer on "how" to do it. — Niko Sams
– Niko Sams, Commented Mar 15, 2013 at 19:55

Smuuf · Accepted Answer · 2019-11-15 09:58:05Z

Ok, took me some time, but I think I have the universal solution:

function safe_urlencode($txt){ // Skip all URL reserved characters plus dot, dash, underscore and tilde.. $result = preg_replace_callback("/[^-\._~:\/\?#\\[\\]@!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=]+/", function ($match) { // ..and encode the rest! return rawurlencode($match[0]); }, $txt); return ($result); }

Basically it splits the string using URL reserved characters (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3986.txt) + some more characters (because I think the "dot" should be also left alone) and does rawurlencode() on the rest.

echo safe_urlencode("https://www.google.com/?q=ä"); // http://www.google.com/?q=%C3%A4 echo safe_urlencode("https://www.example.com/Περιβάλλον?abc=Περιβάλλον"); // http://www.example.com/%CE%A0%CE%B5%CF%81%CE%B9%CE%B2%CE%AC%CE%BB%CE%BB%CE%BF%CE%BD?abc=%CE%A0%CE%B5%CF%81%CE%B9%CE%B2%CE%AC%CE%BB%CE%BB%CE%BF%CE%BD // ^ This is some funky stuff, but it should be right

still looks like a universal solution in 2020. this is indeed very helpful.

Maks3w · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-15 08:09:35Z

Looks that you want encode the query part of the URI without modify schema and host.

Preamble

There are no generic functions shipped by the language to achieve that because is not possible for the language to know if you will use the encoded string for a redirect or as query argument (?url=http%3A%3A....)

So the developer have to extract the part to encode as you did.

Answer

Encapsulate your own code as a function.

function encodeUrlQuery($url) { $u = parse_url($url); return $u['scheme'].'://'.$u['host'].$u['path'].'?'.rawurlencode($u['query']); } echo encodeUrl('http://www.google.com/?q=ä');

As I've stated in the question I have tried that and it doesn't do what I need
No. I see an example encoding query part and asking for a generic solution. Did you read the preamble of my answer?

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

How to encode utf8 as url like browser does in PHP?

2 Answers 2

2 Comments

3 Comments

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

2 Comments

3 Comments

Linked

Related