Chapter 15
The java.net Package

URLEncoder

Name

URLEncoder

Synopsis

Class Name:

java.net.URLEncoder

Superclass:

java.lang.Object

Immediate Subclasses:

None

Interfaces Implemented:

None

Availability:

JDK 1.0 or later

Description

The URLEncoder class defines a single static method that converts a String to its URL-encoded form. More precisely, the String is converted to a MIME type called x-www-form-urlencoded.

This is the format used when posting forms on the Web. The algorithm leaves letters, numbers, and the dash (-), underscore ( _ ), period (.), and asterisk (*) characters unchanged. Space characters are converted to plus signs (+). All other characters are encoded with a percent sign (%) followed by the character code represented as a two-digit hexadecimal number. For example, consider the following string:

Jean-Louis Gassée

This string gets encoded as:

Jean-Louis+Gas%8ee

The point of the URLEncoder class is to provide a way to canonicalize a string into an extremely portable subset of ASCII that can be handled properly by computers around the world.

Class Summary

public class java.net.URLEncoder extends java.lang.Object {
  // Class Methods
  public static String encode(String s);
}

s: The string to encode.

Returns

A URL-encoded string.

Description

This method returns the contents of the String in the x-www-form-urlencoded format.

Inherited Methods

Method	Inherited From	Method	Inherited From
`clone()`	`Object`	`equals(Object)`	`Object`
`finalize()`	`Object`	`getClass()`	`Object`
`hashCode()`	`Object`	`notify()`	`Object`
`notifyAll()`	`Object`	`toString()`	`Object`
`wait()`	`Object`	`wait(long)`	`Object`
`wait(long timeout, int nanos)`	`Object`