How do I encode URI parameter values?

Question

I want to send a URI as the value of a query/matrix parameter. Before I can append it to an existing URI, I need to encode it according to RFC 2396. For example, given the input:

http://google.com/resource?key=value1 & value2

I expect the output:

http%3a%2f%2fgoogle.com%2fresource%3fkey%3dvalue1%2520%26%2520value2

Neither java.net.URLEncoder nor java.net.URI will generate the right output. URLEncoder is meant for HTML form encoding which is not the same as RFC 2396. URI has no mechanism for encoding a single value at a time so it has no way of knowing that value1 and value2 are part of the same key.

Answer 1

Mmhh I know you've already discarded URLEncoder, but despite of what the docs say, I decided to give it a try.

You said:

For example, given an input:

http://google.com/resource?key=value

I expect the output:

http%3a%2f%2fgoogle.com%2fresource%3fkey%3dvalue

So:

C:\oreyes\samples\java\URL>type URLEncodeSample.java
import java.net.*;

public class URLEncodeSample {
    public static void main( String [] args ) throws Throwable {
        System.out.println( URLEncoder.encode( args[0], "UTF-8" ));
    }
}

C:\oreyes\samples\java\URL>javac URLEncodeSample.java

C:\oreyes\samples\java\URL>java URLEncodeSample "http://google.com/resource?key=value"
http%3A%2F%2Fgoogle.com%2Fresource%3Fkey%3Dvalue

As expected.

What would be the problem with this?

Answer 2

I don't have enough reputation to comment on answers, but I just wanted to note that downloading the JSR-311 api by itself will not work. You need to download the reference implementation (jersey).

Only downloading the api from the JSR page will give you a ClassNotFoundException when the api tries to look for an implementation at runtime.

Answer 3

Jersey's UriBuilder encodes URI components using application/x-www-form-urlencoded and RFC 3986 as needed. According to the Javadoc

Builder methods perform contextual encoding of characters not permitted in the corresponding URI component following the rules of the application/x-www-form-urlencoded media type for query parameters and RFC 3986 for all other components. Note that only characters not permitted in a particular component are subject to encoding so, e.g., a path supplied to one of the path methods may contain matrix parameters or multiple path segments since the separators are legal characters and will not be encoded. Percent encoded values are also recognized where allowed and will not be double encoded.

Answer 4

It seems that CharEscapers from Google GData-java-client has what you want. It has uriPathEscaper method, uriQueryStringEscaper, and generic uriEscaper. (All return Escaper object which does actual escaping). Apache License.

Answer 5

I think that the URI class is the one that you are looking for.

Answer 6

You could also use Spring's UriUtils