How to URL encode a string in Ruby

Question

How do I URI  encode a string like    x12 x34 x56 x78 x9a xbc xde xf1 x23 x45 x67 x89 xab xcd xef x12 x34 x56 x78 x9a   to get it in a format like    124Vx 9A BC DE F1 23Eg 89 AB CD EF 124Vx 9A   as per RFC 1738   Here s what I tried   irb main  123 0 gt  URI  encode   x12 x34 x56 x78 x9a xbc xde xf1 x23 x45 x67 x89 xab xcd xef x12 x34 x56 x78 x9a  ArgumentError  invalid byte sequence in UTF-8     from  usr local lib ruby 1 9 1 uri common rb 219 in  gsub      from  usr local lib ruby 1 9 1 uri common rb 219 in  escape      from  usr local lib ruby 1 9 1 uri common rb 505 in  escape      from  irb  123     from  usr local bin irb 12 in   lt main gt     Also   irb main  126 0 gt  CGI  escape   x12 x34 x56 x78 x9a xbc xde xf1 x23 x45 x67 x89 xab xcd xef x12 x34 x56 x78 x9a  ArgumentError  invalid byte sequence in UTF-8     from  usr local lib ruby 1 9 1 cgi util rb 7 in  gsub      from  usr local lib ruby 1 9 1 cgi util rb 7 in  escape      from  irb  126     from  usr local bin irb 12 in   lt main gt     I looked all about the internet and haven t found a way to do this  although I am almost positive that the other day I did this without any trouble at all

User · Answer

You can use Addressable  URI gem for that   require  addressable uri     string     x12 x34 x56 x78 x9a xbc xde xf1 x23 x45 x67 x89 xab xcd xef x12 x34 x56 x78 x9a  Addressable  URI encode component string  Addressable  URI  CharacterClasses  QUERY      5Cx12 5Cx34 5Cx56 5Cx78 5Cx9a 5Cxbc 5Cxde 5Cxf1 5Cx23 5Cx45 5Cx67 5Cx89 5Cxab 5Cxcd 5Cxef 5Cx12 5Cx34 5Cx56 5Cx78 5Cx9a     It uses more modern format  than CGI escape  for example  it properly encodes space as  20 and not as   sign  you can read more in  The application x-www-form-urlencoded type  on Wikipedia   2 1 2  008  gt  CGI escape  Hello  this is me      gt   Hello 2C this is me   2 1 2  009  gt  Addressable  URI encode component  Hello  this is me   Addressable  URI  CharacterClasses  QUERY     gt   Hello  20this 20is 20me

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Code   str    http   localhost with spaces and spaces  encoded   URI  encode str  puts encoded   Result   http   localhost with 20spaces 20and 20spaces

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str     x12 x34 x56 x78 x9a xbc xde xf1 x23 x45 x67 x89 xab xcd xef x12 x34 x56 x78 x9a  require  cgi  CGI escape str      gt    124Vx 9A BC DE F1 23Eg 89 AB CD EF 124Vx 9A    Taken from  J-Rou s comment

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I was originally trying to escape special characters in a file name only  not on the path  from a full URL string   ERB  Util url encode didn t work for my use   helper send  url encode   http   example com  a  11 15       gt   http 3A 2F 2Fexample com 2F 3Fa 3D 09 0D    Based on two answers in  Why is URI escape   marked as obsolete and where is this REGEXP  UNSAFE constant    it looks like URI  RFC2396 Parser escape is better than using URI  Escape escape  However  they both are behaving the same to me   URI escape  http   example com  a  11 15       gt   http   example com  a  09 0D  URI  Parser new escape  http   example com  a  11 15       gt   http   example com  a  09 0D

User · Answer

If you want to  encode  a full URL without having to think about manually splitting it into its different parts  I found the following worked in the same way that I used to use URI encode   URI parse my url  to s

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str     x12 x34 x56 x78 x9a xbc xde xf1 x23 x45 x67 x89 xab xcd xef x12 x34 x56 x78 x9a  force encoding  ASCII-8BIT   puts CGI escape str     gt    124Vx 9A BC DE F1 23Eg 89 AB CD EF 124Vx 9A

User · Answer

I created a gem to make URI encoding stuff cleaner to use in your code  It takes care of binary encoding for you   Run gem install uri-handler  then use   require  uri-handler   str     x12 x34 x56 x78 x9a xbc xde xf1 x23 x45 x67 x89 xab xcd xef x12 x34 x56 x78 x9a  to uri     gt    124Vx 9A BC DE F1 23Eg 89 AB CD EF 124Vx 9A    It adds the URI conversion functionality into the String class  You can also pass it an argument with the optional encoding string you would like to use  By default it sets to encoding  binary  if the straight UTF-8 encoding fails

User · Answer

Nowadays  you should use ERB  Util url encode or CGI escape  The primary difference between them is their handling of spaces    gt  gt  ERB  Util url encode  foo bar  baz amp      gt   foo 2Fbar 3F 20baz 26    gt  gt  CGI escape  foo bar  baz amp      gt   foo 2Fbar 3F baz 26    CGI escape follows the CGI HTML forms spec and gives you an application x-www-form-urlencoded string  which requires spaces be escaped to    whereas ERB  Util url encode follows RFC 3986  which requires them to be encoded as  20   See  What  39 s the difference between URI escape and CGI escape   for more discussion

[ruby-on-rails] How to URL encode a string in Ruby

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