🚀 URL ENCODER / DECODER

Simply paste the text you wish to encode in the Original box, or in case you would want to decode it, paste the encoded text in the Encoded box.

📚 What is URL encoding?

The URL (or Uniform Resource Locator), often informally called link or web address is a reference to a resource on the web, such as a website, an image, or even a google search. It usually consits of a protocol (such as http), a colon :, the host (e.g. example.com) a path (e.g. /example/path/), a questionmark followed by a query (e.g. ?) and a number sign (or hash #) followed by a fragment. The path, the query and the fragment are all optional. Learn more abut it on Wikpedia.

The query part of the url is quite interesting, as it can hold an arbitrary text with a few restrictions. An example of that is a google search. If you type "What is a URL" and you hit enter, the URL in the addressbar becomes something like https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+a+url%3F. The characters, that are not allowed in the query string, such as the space (' ') and the questionmark (?) are replaced by characters (+) or groups of characters (%3F) that are allowed there. What is the benefit of storing the text you typed in google search in the query string? By doing so, your google search became a web resource, allowing you to share it or to save it as a bookmark.

An interesting thing to note is that the original specification replaces the space character (' ') with (%20), but since the + character is allowed in the querystring (but not in all URL parts), google replaces it with a + which makes their query string easier to read. This tool currently adheres to the specification and replaces space (' ') with (%20). Read more about this in this StackOverflow answer.

You can find out more about the character mapping below.

⚙️ How does it work?

This url encoder utility makes use of the encodeURIComponent browser function.

🔓 What about privacy? Can I trust this site with sensitve content?

This page does not save any of the entered content and it does the transformation in your browser, which makes it secure. (Since you're looking for and URL encoder, you probably know how to check the page source 😉)