What Is URL Encoding?

We've been there; you're trying to order a pizza on Seamless, but the URL is so long that it does not even fit on the screen. Then, just as you're about to give up and order from Papa John's instead, you realize that the problem isn't with your browser or your Internet connection. It's with the URL. Every time you enter a key on your keyboard when you're typing out a URL, you're potentially entering character codes that are not easily readable by browsers or servers, which can cause problems for your website. So we've devised a system that lets us encode the information in those characters into a universally accepted format. No matter what browser or server interprets your URL, only one set of characters will appear as output: ours! URL encoding translates unprintable or special characters to a universally accepted format by web servers and browsers. The percent character (%) is used as a prefix to indicate that the character that follows it should be encoded to encode information. The digits in the character triplets represent the numerical value of the replaced characters. For example, when you want to submit form data to your server using a GET request, you need to URL encode it first. The RFC 3986 defines the encoding for a URL; however, some characters are not allowed in a URL. These characters can be encoded using other characters. For example, a semicolon separates parts of the URL but is not permitted in Unicode. Can use a colon instead of a semicolon, which will still be considered part of the URL; as you know, the Internet is a prominent place. With so much space to fill, it's no surprise that many characters are out there.But some characters aren't allowed in URLs, and others are reserved for particular purposes. That's why we've decided to encode them!