[javascript] URL encode sees “&” (ampersand) as “&” HTML entity

I am encoding a string that will be passed in a URL (via GET). But if I use escape, encodeURI or encodeURIComponent, & will be replaced with %26amp%3B, but I want it to be replaced with %26. What am I doing wrong?

If you did literally this:

encodeURIComponent('&')

Then the result is %26, you can test it here. Make sure the string you are encoding is just & and not & to begin with...otherwise it is encoding correctly, which is likely the case. If you need a different result for some reason, you can do a .replace(/&/g,'&') before the encoding.

There is HTML and URI encodings. & is & encoded in HTML while %26 is & in URI encoding.

So before URI encoding your string you might want to HTML decode and then URI encode it :)

var div = document.createElement('div');
div.innerHTML = '&AndOtherHTMLEncodedStuff';
var htmlDecoded = div.firstChild.nodeValue;
var urlEncoded = encodeURIComponent(htmlDecoded);

result %26AndOtherHTMLEncodedStuff

Hope this saves you some time