How to find out if string has already been URL enc

问题:

How could I check if string has already been encoded?

For example, if I encode TEST==, I get TEST%3D%3D. If I again encode last string, I get TEST%253D%253D, I would have to know before doing that if it is already encoded...

I have encoded parameters saved, and I need to search for them. I don't know for input parameters, what will they be - encoded or not, so I have to know if I have to encode or decode them before search.

回答1:

Decode, compare to original. If it does differ, original is encoded. If it doesn't differ, original isn't encoded. But still it says nothing about whether the newly decoded version isn't still encoded. A good task for recursion.

I hope one can't write a quine in urlencode, or this algorithm would get stuck.

回答2:

Use regexp to check if your string contains illegal characters (i.e. characters which cannot be found in URL-encoded string, like whitespace).

回答3:

Joel on software had a solution for this sometime back - http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Wrong.html
Or You may add some prefix to the Strings.

回答4:

You can't know for sure, unless your strings conform to a certain pattern, or you keep track of your strings. As you noted by yourself, a String that is encoded can also be encoded, so you can't be 100% sure by looking at the string itself.

回答5:

Try decoding the url. If the resulting string is shorter than the original then the original URL was already encoded, else you can safely encode it (either it is not encoded, or even post encoding the url stays as is, so encoding again will not result in a wrong url). Below is sample pseudo (inspired by ruby) code:

# Returns encoded URL for any given URL after determining whether it is already encoded or not
    def escape(url)
      unescaped_url = URI.unescape(url)
      if (unescaped_url.length < url.length)
        return url
      else
        return URI.escape(url)
      end
    end

回答6:

Check your URL for suspicious characters[1]. List of candidates:

WHITE_SPACE ,", < , > , { , } , | , \ , ^ , ~ , [ , ] , . and `

I use:

private static boolean isAlreadyEncoded(String passedUrl) {
        boolean isEncoded = true;
        if (passedUrl.matches(".*[\\ \"\\<\\>\\{\\}|\\\\^~\\[\\]].*")) {
                isEncoded = false;
        }
        return isEncoded;
}

For the actual encoding I proceed with:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/49796882/1485527

Note: Even if your URL doesn't contain unsafe characters you might want to apply, e.g. Punnycode encoding to the host name. So there is still much space for additional checks.

---

[1] A list of candidates can be found in the section "unsafe" of the URL spec at Page 2. In my understanding '%' or '#' should be left out in the encoding check, since these characters can occur in encoded URLs as well.