Need More Leads for Your Business? Visit Us at SERPANA.COM
No. 1 Free Social Classifieds. Best Social Classifieds, Fonolive.

URL Decode, decode url, url decoder, online url decoer, decode url online

Enter url or website, decode url, decode website url

What is URL Decoding?

Url decoding is just the opposite of Url encoding. You can use the Serpana online url decoder to decode urls.

The text below illustrates how to move from plain text to encoded urls. The reverse process is known as url decoding.

URL Encoding

Enter a string of text and encode or decode it as you like.

Useful for turning encoded JavaScript URLs from complete gibberish into readable gibberish.

URL Encoding Background Information

URL Encoding is the process of converting or changing a string into a valid URL format easily interpretable by web browsers. Valid URL format means that the URL contains only what is termed "alpha | digit | safe | extra | escape" characters. You can read more about the what and the whys of these terms on the World Wide Web Consortium site: http://www.w3.org/Addressing/URL/url-spec.html and http://www.w3.org/International/francois.yergeau.html.

URL encoding is often done to convert data passed via html forms, as such data may contain special characters like "/", ".", "#", and etc, which could either: a) have special meanings; or b) is not a valid character for a URL; or c) could be altered during transfer. For example, the "#" character needs to be encoded because it has a special meaning of that of an html anchor. The character also needs to be encoded since is not allowed on a valid URL format. Also, some characters, such as "~" might not transport properly across the internet.

Example

URL Encoding often comes into play when using html s. Form methods (GET and POST) perform URL Encoding implicitly. Websites use GET and POST methods to send parameters between html pages.

As an example, click the form below to see the string being URL encoded.

This sample

sends the data in the text field using the GET method, which means that the data will be appended as query string.

If you click the button and look at the resulting URL in the browser address bar, you should see something like this (the query string portion, gets automatically URL encoded by the browser, is shown in blue):

https://serpana.com/url-encoder?var=Try+this+simple+%26+short+url+encoding+test.

Also, you can see that:

The character has been URL encoded as "+".

The & character has been URL encoded as "%26".

character and & character are just some of the special characters that need to be encoded. Below are some others (click the button to see the result of the encoding).

Here's the query string portion, which (as before) has been encoded by the browser automatically:

var=%24+%26+%3C+%3E+%3F+%3B+%23+%3A+%3D+%2C+%22+%27+%7E+%2B+%25

When a character is URL-encoded, it's converted as %XY, where X and Y is a number. Later, you will see where these number come from or how they get generated.

What Needs be URL Encoded?

As a rule of thumb, any non alphanumeric character should be URL encoded. This of course applies to characters that are to be interpreted as is (ie: is not intend to have special meanings) . In such cases, there's no harm in URL-Encoding the character, even if the character actually does not need to be URL-Encoded.

Some Common Special Characters

Here's a table of some of often used characters and their URL encodings.

Character URL -> Encoded

; -> %3B

? -> %3F

/ -> %2F

: -> %3A

# -> %23

& -> %26

= -> %3D

+ -> %2B

$ -> %24

, -> %2C

-> %20 or +

% -> %25

< -> %3C

> -> %3E

~ -> %7E

% -> %25

Note that because the character is very commonly used, a special code ( the "+" sign) has been reserved as its URL encoding. Thus the string "A B" can be URL encoded as either "A%20B" or "A+B".

Where Does the Numbers Come From?

The number following the % sign is the hexadecimal ASCII code of the character being encoded. You can find an ASCII table here.

Language Support

Most web programming languages already provide built in method to perform URL Encoding and URL Decoding. Here are the common ones, click the method name to find more info.

Languagege -> URL Encoding -> URL Decoding

VBScript -> escape(string) [url encode] -> unescape(string) [url decode]

.NET -> HttpUtility.UrlEncode [url encode] -> HttpUtility.UrlDecode [url decode]

Java -> java.net.URLEncode.encode(String) [url encode]

JavaScript -> escape(String) [url encode] Note: does not encode '/' and '+' character -> unescape(String) [url decode]

PHP -> urlencode(string) [url encode] -> urldecode(string) [url decode]

ASP -> Server.URLEncode(string) [url encode]

Perl -> uri_escape [url encode] Use CGI.pm module. -> uri_unescape [url decode]

Flash (MX or later) -> escape(expresiion) -> unescape(expression) [url decode]

Sites Recently Viewed