Is a URL allowed to contain a space

Question

Is a URI  specifically an HTTP URL  allowed to contain one or more space characters  If a URL must be encoded  is   just a commonly followed convention  or a legitimate alternative     In particular  can someone point to an RFC that indicates that a URL with a space must be encoded   Motivation for question  While beta-testing a web site  I noted that some URLs were constructed with spaces in them  Firefox seemed to do the right thing  which surprised me  But I wanted to be able to point the developers to an RFC so that they would feel the need to fix those URLs

User · Answer

Urls should not have spaces in them   If you need to address one that does  use its encoded value of  20

User · Answer

As per RFC 1738      Unsafe       Characters can be unsafe for a number of reasons   The space      character is unsafe because significant spaces may disappear and      insignificant spaces may be introduced when URLs are transcribed or      typeset or subjected to the treatment of word-processing programs       The characters   lt   and   gt   are unsafe because they are used as the      delimiters around URLs in free text  the quote mark       is used to      delimit URLs in some systems   The character     is unsafe and should      always be encoded because it is used in World Wide Web and in other      systems to delimit a URL from a fragment anchor identifier that might      follow it   The character     is unsafe because it is used for      encodings of other characters   Other characters are unsafe because      gateways and other transport agents are known to sometimes modify      such characters  These characters are                                              and           All unsafe characters must always be encoded within a URL  For      example  the character     must be encoded within URLs even in      systems that do not normally deal with fragment or anchor      identifiers  so that if the URL is copied into another system that      does use them  it will not be necessary to change the URL encoding

User · Answer

URLs are defined in RFC 3986  though other RFCs are relevant as well but RFC 1738 is obsolete   They may not have spaces in them  along with many other characters   Since those forbidden characters often need to be represented somehow  there is a scheme for encoding them into a URL by translating them to their ASCII hexadecimal equivalent with a     prefix   Most programming languages platforms provide functions for encoding and decoding URLs  though they may not properly adhere to the RFC standards   For example  I know that PHP does not

User · Answer

Can someone point to an RFC indicating that a URL with a space must be encoded    URIs  and thus URLs  are defined in RFC 3986   If you look at the grammar defined over there you will eventually note that a space character never can be part of a syntactically legal URL  thus the term  URL with a space  is a contradiction in itself

User · Answer

Urls should not have spaces in them   If you need to address one that does  use its encoded value of  20

User · Answer

Why does it have to be encoded  A request looks like this   GET  url HTTP 1 1  Ignoring headers    There are 3 fields separated by a white space  If you put a space in your url   GET  url end url HTTP 1 1   You know have 4 fields  the HTTP server will tell you it is an invalid request   GET  url 20end url HTTP 1 1   3 fields    valid  Note  in the query string  after     a space is usually encoded as a    GET  url var foo bar HTTP 1 1    rather than   GET  url var foo 20bar HTTP 1 1

User · Answer

Shorter answer  no  you must encode a space  it is correct to encode a space as    but only in the query string  in the path you must use  20

User · Answer

Why does it have to be encoded  A request looks like this   GET  url HTTP 1 1  Ignoring headers    There are 3 fields separated by a white space  If you put a space in your url   GET  url end url HTTP 1 1   You know have 4 fields  the HTTP server will tell you it is an invalid request   GET  url 20end url HTTP 1 1   3 fields    valid  Note  in the query string  after     a space is usually encoded as a    GET  url var foo bar HTTP 1 1    rather than   GET  url var foo 20bar HTTP 1 1

User · Answer

Yes   the space is usually encoded to   20  though  Any parameters that pass to a URL should be encoded  simply for safety reasons

User · Answer

Why does it have to be encoded  A request looks like this   GET  url HTTP 1 1  Ignoring headers    There are 3 fields separated by a white space  If you put a space in your url   GET  url end url HTTP 1 1   You know have 4 fields  the HTTP server will tell you it is an invalid request   GET  url 20end url HTTP 1 1   3 fields    valid  Note  in the query string  after     a space is usually encoded as a    GET  url var foo bar HTTP 1 1    rather than   GET  url var foo 20bar HTTP 1 1

User · Answer

Shorter answer  no  you must encode a space  it is correct to encode a space as    but only in the query string  in the path you must use  20

User · Answer

To answer your question   I would say it s fairly common for applications to replace spaces in values that will be used in URLs   The reason for this is ussually to avoid the more difficult to read percent  URI  encoding that occurs   Check out this wikipedia article about Percent-encoding

User · Answer

URL can have an Space Character in them and they will be displayed as  20 in most of the browsers  but browser encoding rules change quite often and we cannot depend on how a browser will display the URL   So Instead you can replace the Space Character in the URL with any character that you think shall make the URL More readable and   Pretty            O so general characters that are preferred are  -               but these aren t the compulsions so u can use any of the character that is not supposed to be in the URL Already   Please avoid the    amp               lt  as the URL Space Character Replacement as they can pull up an error on certain browsers and Platforms    As you can see the Stak overflow itself uses the  -  character as Space  20  replacement   Have an Happy questioning

User · Answer

URLs are defined in RFC 3986  though other RFCs are relevant as well but RFC 1738 is obsolete   They may not have spaces in them  along with many other characters   Since those forbidden characters often need to be represented somehow  there is a scheme for encoding them into a URL by translating them to their ASCII hexadecimal equivalent with a     prefix   Most programming languages platforms provide functions for encoding and decoding URLs  though they may not properly adhere to the RFC standards   For example  I know that PHP does not

User · Answer

Can someone point to an RFC indicating that a URL with a space must be encoded    URIs  and thus URLs  are defined in RFC 3986   If you look at the grammar defined over there you will eventually note that a space character never can be part of a syntactically legal URL  thus the term  URL with a space  is a contradiction in itself

User · Answer

Yes   the space is usually encoded to   20  though  Any parameters that pass to a URL should be encoded  simply for safety reasons

User · Answer

Urls should not have spaces in them   If you need to address one that does  use its encoded value of  20

User · Answer

Can someone point to an RFC indicating that a URL with a space must be encoded    URIs  and thus URLs  are defined in RFC 3986   If you look at the grammar defined over there you will eventually note that a space character never can be part of a syntactically legal URL  thus the term  URL with a space  is a contradiction in itself

User · Answer

Firefox 3 will display  20s in URLs as spaces in the address bar

User · Answer

As per RFC 1738      Unsafe       Characters can be unsafe for a number of reasons   The space      character is unsafe because significant spaces may disappear and      insignificant spaces may be introduced when URLs are transcribed or      typeset or subjected to the treatment of word-processing programs       The characters   lt   and   gt   are unsafe because they are used as the      delimiters around URLs in free text  the quote mark       is used to      delimit URLs in some systems   The character     is unsafe and should      always be encoded because it is used in World Wide Web and in other      systems to delimit a URL from a fragment anchor identifier that might      follow it   The character     is unsafe because it is used for      encodings of other characters   Other characters are unsafe because      gateways and other transport agents are known to sometimes modify      such characters  These characters are                                              and           All unsafe characters must always be encoded within a URL  For      example  the character     must be encoded within URLs even in      systems that do not normally deal with fragment or anchor      identifiers  so that if the URL is copied into another system that      does use them  it will not be necessary to change the URL encoding

User · Answer

URL can have an Space Character in them and they will be displayed as  20 in most of the browsers  but browser encoding rules change quite often and we cannot depend on how a browser will display the URL   So Instead you can replace the Space Character in the URL with any character that you think shall make the URL More readable and   Pretty            O so general characters that are preferred are  -               but these aren t the compulsions so u can use any of the character that is not supposed to be in the URL Already   Please avoid the    amp               lt  as the URL Space Character Replacement as they can pull up an error on certain browsers and Platforms    As you can see the Stak overflow itself uses the  -  character as Space  20  replacement   Have an Happy questioning

User · Answer

Can someone point to an RFC indicating that a URL with a space must be encoded    URIs  and thus URLs  are defined in RFC 3986   If you look at the grammar defined over there you will eventually note that a space character never can be part of a syntactically legal URL  thus the term  URL with a space  is a contradiction in itself

User · Answer

As per RFC 1738      Unsafe       Characters can be unsafe for a number of reasons   The space      character is unsafe because significant spaces may disappear and      insignificant spaces may be introduced when URLs are transcribed or      typeset or subjected to the treatment of word-processing programs       The characters   lt   and   gt   are unsafe because they are used as the      delimiters around URLs in free text  the quote mark       is used to      delimit URLs in some systems   The character     is unsafe and should      always be encoded because it is used in World Wide Web and in other      systems to delimit a URL from a fragment anchor identifier that might      follow it   The character     is unsafe because it is used for      encodings of other characters   Other characters are unsafe because      gateways and other transport agents are known to sometimes modify      such characters  These characters are                                              and           All unsafe characters must always be encoded within a URL  For      example  the character     must be encoded within URLs even in      systems that do not normally deal with fragment or anchor      identifiers  so that if the URL is copied into another system that      does use them  it will not be necessary to change the URL encoding

User · Answer

Shorter answer  no  you must encode a space  it is correct to encode a space as    but only in the query string  in the path you must use  20

User · Answer

As per RFC 1738      Unsafe       Characters can be unsafe for a number of reasons   The space      character is unsafe because significant spaces may disappear and      insignificant spaces may be introduced when URLs are transcribed or      typeset or subjected to the treatment of word-processing programs       The characters   lt   and   gt   are unsafe because they are used as the      delimiters around URLs in free text  the quote mark       is used to      delimit URLs in some systems   The character     is unsafe and should      always be encoded because it is used in World Wide Web and in other      systems to delimit a URL from a fragment anchor identifier that might      follow it   The character     is unsafe because it is used for      encodings of other characters   Other characters are unsafe because      gateways and other transport agents are known to sometimes modify      such characters  These characters are                                              and           All unsafe characters must always be encoded within a URL  For      example  the character     must be encoded within URLs even in      systems that do not normally deal with fragment or anchor      identifiers  so that if the URL is copied into another system that      does use them  it will not be necessary to change the URL encoding

User · Answer

Firefox 3 will display  20s in URLs as spaces in the address bar

User · Answer

To answer your question   I would say it s fairly common for applications to replace spaces in values that will be used in URLs   The reason for this is ussually to avoid the more difficult to read percent  URI  encoding that occurs   Check out this wikipedia article about Percent-encoding

User · Answer

Firefox 3 will display  20s in URLs as spaces in the address bar

User · Answer

Yes   the space is usually encoded to   20  though  Any parameters that pass to a URL should be encoded  simply for safety reasons

User · Answer

URLs are defined in RFC 3986  though other RFCs are relevant as well but RFC 1738 is obsolete   They may not have spaces in them  along with many other characters   Since those forbidden characters often need to be represented somehow  there is a scheme for encoding them into a URL by translating them to their ASCII hexadecimal equivalent with a     prefix   Most programming languages platforms provide functions for encoding and decoding URLs  though they may not properly adhere to the RFC standards   For example  I know that PHP does not

User · Answer

Why does it have to be encoded  A request looks like this   GET  url HTTP 1 1  Ignoring headers    There are 3 fields separated by a white space  If you put a space in your url   GET  url end url HTTP 1 1   You know have 4 fields  the HTTP server will tell you it is an invalid request   GET  url 20end url HTTP 1 1   3 fields    valid  Note  in the query string  after     a space is usually encoded as a    GET  url var foo bar HTTP 1 1    rather than   GET  url var foo 20bar HTTP 1 1

User · Answer

To answer your question   I would say it s fairly common for applications to replace spaces in values that will be used in URLs   The reason for this is ussually to avoid the more difficult to read percent  URI  encoding that occurs   Check out this wikipedia article about Percent-encoding

User · Answer

Firefox 3 will display  20s in URLs as spaces in the address bar

User · Answer

Yes   the space is usually encoded to   20  though  Any parameters that pass to a URL should be encoded  simply for safety reasons

User · Answer

Shorter answer  no  you must encode a space  it is correct to encode a space as    but only in the query string  in the path you must use  20

User · Answer

To answer your question   I would say it s fairly common for applications to replace spaces in values that will be used in URLs   The reason for this is ussually to avoid the more difficult to read percent  URI  encoding that occurs   Check out this wikipedia article about Percent-encoding

User · Answer

Urls should not have spaces in them   If you need to address one that does  use its encoded value of  20

User · Answer

URLs are defined in RFC 3986  though other RFCs are relevant as well but RFC 1738 is obsolete   They may not have spaces in them  along with many other characters   Since those forbidden characters often need to be represented somehow  there is a scheme for encoding them into a URL by translating them to their ASCII hexadecimal equivalent with a     prefix   Most programming languages platforms provide functions for encoding and decoding URLs  though they may not properly adhere to the RFC standards   For example  I know that PHP does not

[html] Is a URL allowed to contain a space?

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