How to URL encode a string in Ruby

user_732888 0
Viewed 193976

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> 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 `<main>'

Also:

irb(main):126:0> 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 `<main>'

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.

urlencode uri ruby-on-rails ruby string
9 Answers

Code:

str = "http://localhost/with spaces and spaces"
encoded = URI::encode(str)
puts encoded

Result:

http://localhost/with%20spaces%20and%20spaces
user_15327690

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
user_11370850

A couple of answers here are using URI.escape/URI::escape. In Ruby 3.1.2, these options are not available. Instead, you can use ::encode_with_form_component:

require 'uri'
RUBY_VERSION
=> "3.1.2"
search_criteria="Apple Sauce"
URI::encode_www_form_component(search_criteria)
=> "Apple+Sauce"
user_45013540
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