What characters are allowed in an URL query string?
Do query strings have to follow a particular format?
What characters are allowed in an URL query string?
Do query strings have to follow a particular format?
Per http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986
In section 2.2 Reserved Characters, the following characters are listed:
reserved = gen-delims / sub-delims
gen-delims = “:” / “/” / “?” / “#” / “[” / “]” / “@”
sub-delims = “!” / “$” / “&” / “’” / “(” / “)” / “*” / “+” / “,” / “;” / “=”
The spec then says:
If data for a URI component would conflict with a reserved character’s purpose as a delimiter, then the conflicting data must be percent-encoded before the URI is formed.
Next, in section 2.3 Unreserved Characters, the following are listed:
unreserved = ALPHA / DIGIT / “-” / “.” / “_” / “~”
Wikipedia has your answer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Query_string
"URL Encoding: Some characters cannot be part of a URL (for example, the space) and some other characters have a special meaning in a URL: for example, the character # can be used to further specify a subsection (or fragment) of a document; the character = is used to separate a name from a value. A query string may need to be converted to satisfy these constraints. This can be done using a schema known as URL encoding.
In particular, encoding the query string uses the following rules:
The octet corresponding to the tilde ("~") character is often encoded as "%7E" by older URI processing implementations; the "%7E" can be replaced by"~" without changing its interpretation. The encoding of SPACE as '+' and the selection of "as-is" characters distinguishes this encoding from RFC 1738."
Regarding the format, query strings are name value pairs. The ? separates the query string from the URL. Each name value pair is separated by an ampersand (&) while the name (key) and value is separated by an equals sign (=). eg. http://domain.com?key=value&secondkey=secondvalue
Under Structure in the Wikipedia reference I provided:
This link has the answer and formatted values you all need.
https://perishablepress.com/url-character-codes/
For your convenience, this is the list:
< %3C
> %3E
# %23
% %25
{ %7B
} %7D
| %7C
\ %5C
^ %5E
~ %7E
[ %5B
] %5D
` %60
; %3B
/ %2F
? %3F
: %3A
@ %40
= %3D
& %26
$ %24
+ %2B
" %22
space %20