View Problem

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?
DiskEdit
ruby
gem 'uri-query_params'
require 'uri/query_params'

url = URI("http://myserver.com/custinfo/edit.php?mode=view&fname=Ron%20&%20Jean&lname=Smith")
url.query_params['fname']
# => "Ron & Jean"
DiskEdit
ruby
url = "http://myserver.com/custinfo/edit.php?mode=view&fname=Ron & Jean&lname=Smith"
url = URI.parse(URI.encode(url))

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