& url question

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

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Re: & url question by davidrw (Prior) on May 24, 2005 at 13:26 UTC
The & needs escaping as %26 like this: `mycode.pl?param=first&second=name&details=items%26things&other=more<br +>` [download] There are modules to escape stuff for you. For example, URI::Escape -- this example is basically straight from the man page: `perl -MURI::Escape -le 'print uri_escape("10% is enough\n"); # 10%25%20is%20enough%0A` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: & url question by holli (Abbot) on May 24, 2005 at 13:33 UTC
Because "&" is special in URLs you have to encode it: `use Tie::UrlEncoder; print "mycode.pl?param=first&second=name&details=" . $urlencode{"items&things"} . "&other=more"; #mycode.pl?param=first&second=name&details=items%26things&other=more` [download] holli, /regexed monk/	[reply] [d/l]
Re: & url question by reasonablekeith (Deacon) on May 24, 2005 at 13:18 UTC
call your parameter "items_and_things"? Update: This is the wrong way round. You want to know how to pass an ampersand on a url. You need to escape it. & => %26 --- my name's not Keith, and I'm not reasonable.	[reply]
Re^2: & url question by Anonymous Monk on May 24, 2005 at 13:54 UTC
Thanks, Here is what I did, `$url =~ s/&/%26/g;` [download] And it worked, it was a great idea! Thank you!	[reply] [d/l]
Re: & url question by rlucas (Scribe) on May 24, 2005 at 13:32 UTC
If you want your code to play nice with others, you should definitely: When constructing URL strings: Use only \w+ for parameter names uri-escape (see URI::Escape) the parameter values When parsing URL strings: Just use CGI.pm's param functionality. Or, for an extra buffer, use CGI::Safe. The only "&" characters in your URL should be explicitly put there by you (or code that constructs the URL for you) as separators -- generally, all metacharacters, whitespace, etc. will be URI-escaped into %xy hex values.	[reply]
Re^2: & url question by Anonymous Monk on May 24, 2005 at 13:40 UTC
Yes, I know but that name is a name that is like that, I can't change it.	[reply]
Re^3: & url question by dorward (Curate) on May 24, 2005 at 14:46 UTC
You aren't changing it. You are representing it in a URL. In morse code the data "s" is represented as "...". In URLs, the data "&" is represented as "%26" Edit: Having reread the grandparent I now see I'm being stupid. The grandparent is good style advice, but sometimes changing things after the fact is a little difficult - especially on a short time scale. You can encode the names as well as the values of parameters though.	[reply]
Re: & url question by saberworks (Curate) on May 24, 2005 at 17:44 UTC
Just for the record, if you want your XHTML to validate, you can't just use `&` in linked urls. You have to actually use `&` or the w3c validator complains. So if you are linking a url like this: `http://domain/link.cgi?id=5&other_var=9`, to get it to validate you have to do: `http://domain/link.cgi?id=5&other_var=9`.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: & url question by Anonymous Monk on May 25, 2005 at 06:12 UTC
Not exactly right. You have to write &-s as &-s in (X)HTML _only_. It's another coding: HTML parameter value coding. <a href="index.cgi?name=AT%26T&id=1">...</a> The value of the link's href parameter (the URL, what you will see in the browser's location bar) will be "index.cgi?name=AT%26T&id=1", the value of name will be AT&T, and the value of id will be 1.	[reply]