URL encoding in Android

You don't encode the entire URL, only parts of it that come from "unreliable sources".

• Java:

  String query = URLEncoder.encode("apples oranges", "utf-8");String url = "http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=" + query;

• Kotlin:

  val query: String = URLEncoder.encode("apples oranges", "utf-8")val url = "http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=$query"

Alternatively, you can use Strings.urlEncode(String str) of DroidParts that doesn't throw checked exceptions.

Or use something like

String uri = Uri.parse("http://...")                .buildUpon()                .appendQueryParameter("key", "val")                .build().toString();

I'm going to add one suggestion here. You can do this which avoids having to get any external libraries.

Give this a try:

String urlStr = "http://abc.dev.domain.com/0007AC/ads/800x480 15sec h.264.mp4";URL url = new URL(urlStr);URI uri = new URI(url.getProtocol(), url.getUserInfo(), url.getHost(), url.getPort(), url.getPath(), url.getQuery(), url.getRef());url = uri.toURL();

You can see that in this particular URL, I need to have those spaces encoded so that I can use it for a request.

This takes advantage of a couple features available to you in Android classes. First, the URL class can break a url into its proper components so there is no need for you to do any string search/replace work. Secondly, this approach takes advantage of the URI class feature of properly escaping components when you construct a URI via components rather than from a single string.

The beauty of this approach is that you can take any valid url string and have it work without needing any special knowledge of it yourself.

For android, I would use String android.net.Uri.encode(String s)

Encodes characters in the given string as '%'-escaped octets using the UTF-8 scheme. Leaves letters ("A-Z", "a-z"), numbers ("0-9"), and unreserved characters ("_-!.~'()*") intact. Encodes all other characters.

Ex/

String urlEncoded = "http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=" + Uri.encode(query);