langref.org - ruby, java, perl, groovy ... - Strings | Printing | Retrieve a string containing ampersands from the variables in a url

View Problem

Strings

Printing

Retrieve a string containing ampersands from the variables in a url

My PHP script first does a query to obtain customer info for a form. The form has first name and last name fields among others. The customer has put entries such as "Ron & Jean" in the first name field in the database. Then the edit form script is called with variables such as

"http://myserver.com/custinfo/edit.php?mode=view&fname=Ron & Jean&lname=Smith".

The script variable for first name $_REQUEST['firstname'] never gets beyond the "Ron" value because of the ampersand in the data.

I have tried various functions like urldecode but all to no avail. I even tried encoding the url before the view screen is painted so that the url looks like "http://myserver/custinfo/edit.php?mode=view&fname="Ronxxnbsp;xxamp;xxnbsp;Jean"&lname=SMITH". (sorry I had to add the xx to replace the ampersand or it didn't display meaningful url contents the browser sees.)

Of course this fails for the same reasons. What is a better approach?

java 1.5

Map<String, String> params = new HashMap<String, String>();
params.put("mode", "view");
params.put("fname", "Ron & Jean");
params.put("lname", "Smith");

StringBuilder buffer = new StringBuilder();
for (Map.Entry<String, String> entry : params.entrySet()) {
buffer.append(URLEncoder.encode(entry.getKey(), "UTF-8"))
.append("=")
.append(URLEncoder.encode(entry.getValue(), "UTF-8"));
}
System.out.println(buffer.toString());

groovy

// Given the nature of the question text, I am assuming the question
// is how to produce a application/x-www-form-urlencoded compliant string

def basename = 'http://somedomain.com/somebase/'
def parameter = 'Bart & Lisa'
// equivalent to php
println basename + URLEncoder.encode(parameter)
// recommended approach is to specify encoding
println basename + URLEncoder.encode(parameter, "UTF-8")

scala

import java.net.URLEncoder

val params = Map("mode"->"view", "fname"->"Ron & Jean", "lname"->"Smith")
var url = ""

for ((k, v) <- params) { url += URLEncoder.encode(k) + "=" + URLEncoder.encode(v) }

println(url)

scala

import java.net.URLEncoder
val params = Map("mode"->"view", "fname"->"Ron & Jean", "lname"->"Smith")
(for ((k, v) <- params) yield URLEncoder.encode(k) + "=" + URLEncoder.encode(v) ).mkString("&")

python

# I'm not really sure this is what the site is for,
# but the one unsolved problem for python was grating me.
# Anyway, I think this is what you're looking for.

from urllib import urlencode

query_dict = {'mode': 'view',
'fname': 'Ron & Jean',
'lname': 'Smith'}

print urlencode(query_dict.items())

# Which will be 'lname=Smith&mode=view&fname=Ron+%26+Jean'.

fsharp

//the problem arises due to the fact that you've attempted to apply HTML entities encoding rather than URL encoding to your data!
//in F#, for example, assuming you would call this function with fname and lname parameters, this would produce the desired output
let getProperUrl fname lname = sprintf "http://myserver.com/custinfo/edit.php?mode=view&fname=%s&lname=%s" (HttpUtility.UrlEncode fname) (HttpUtility.UrlEncode lname)

php PHP 5

/************************
* This is definitely not what this site is about
* This is not a site where you can get help with various problems
* It's a site where you can say:
* "How do you do the following in your language"
*
*************
*
* Anyway...
* I would use urlencode like you have tried
* (or to be on the safe side: rawurlencode() )
************************/

$parameter = "Bart & Lisa";
echo "<a href='".basename(__FILE__)."?fname=".$parameter."'>?fname=".$parameter."</a><br />\n";
echo "<a href='".basename(__FILE__)."?fname=".rawurlencode($parameter)."'>?fname=".rawurlencode($parameter)."</a><br />\n";

echo "<pre>", print_r($_REQUEST, true), "</pre>";

/***************
* Try to save this as a file and run the script
************
* If you hover the mouse over the link, they will look exactly the same
* but if you click them, they will output differently
***************/

// Cheers, "Josso"

php

echo("The given input URL is mal-formed; it should be URL-encoded. Use urldecode() on each argument to decode it.");

Submit a new solution for ruby, java, perl, groovy ...