encodeurl

What is encodeurl?

The encodeurl npm package is used to encode a URL to a percent-encoded form, excluding already-encoded sequences. This is particularly useful when you need to encode a URL in a way that is safe to include in HTTP headers and HTML links without double-encoding existing percent-encoded characters.

What are encodeurl's main functionalities?

Percent-encoding URL

This feature allows you to encode a URL into a format that can be safely transmitted over the internet. The code sample demonstrates how to encode a URL with query parameters, ensuring that spaces and other special characters are properly percent-encoded.

const encodeUrl = require('encodeurl');
const encodedUrl = encodeUrl('https://example.com/foo?user=bar+baz');
console.log(encodedUrl);

Other packages similar to encodeurl

querystring

The querystring package provides utilities for parsing and formatting URL query strings. It can be used to percent-encode a query string, but unlike encodeurl, it is specifically designed for handling the query string part of a URL and not the entire URL.

qs

Similar to querystring, the qs package allows for parsing and stringifying query strings with more advanced features like nested objects. It also handles percent-encoding but is focused on the query string component rather than full URLs.

urlencode

The urlencode package is another alternative for percent-encoding URLs and query strings. It offers similar functionality to encodeurl but with a slightly different API and additional options for encoding.

README

encodeurl

Encode a URL to a percent-encoded form, excluding already-encoded sequences

Installation

This is a Node.js module available through the npm registry. Installation is done using the npm install command:

$ npm install encodeurl

API

var encodeUrl = require('encodeurl')

encodeUrl(url)

Encode a URL to a percent-encoded form, excluding already-encoded sequences.

This function will take an already-encoded URL and encode all the non-URL code points (as UTF-8 byte sequences). This function will not encode the "%" character unless it is not part of a valid sequence (%20 will be left as-is, but %foo will be encoded as %25foo).

This encode is meant to be "safe" and does not throw errors. It will try as hard as it can to properly encode the given URL, including replacing any raw, unpaired surrogate pairs with the Unicode replacement character prior to encoding.

This function is similar to the intrinsic function encodeURI, except it will not encode the % character if that is part of a valid sequence, will not encode [ and ] (for IPv6 hostnames) and will replace raw, unpaired surrogate pairs with the Unicode replacement character (instead of throwing).

Examples

Encode a URL containing user-controled data

var encodeUrl = require('encodeurl')
var escapeHtml = require('escape-html')

http.createServer(function onRequest (req, res) {
  // get encoded form of inbound url
  var url = encodeUrl(req.url)

  // create html message
  var body = '<p>Location ' + escapeHtml(url) + ' not found</p>'

  // send a 404
  res.statusCode = 404
  res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'text/html; charset=UTF-8')
  res.setHeader('Content-Length', String(Buffer.byteLength(body, 'utf-8')))
  res.end(body, 'utf-8')
})

Encode a URL for use in a header field

var encodeUrl = require('encodeurl')
var escapeHtml = require('escape-html')
var url = require('url')

http.createServer(function onRequest (req, res) {
  // parse inbound url
  var href = url.parse(req)

  // set new host for redirect
  href.host = 'localhost'
  href.protocol = 'https:'
  href.slashes = true

  // create location header
  var location = encodeUrl(url.format(href))

  // create html message
  var body = '<p>Redirecting to new site: ' + escapeHtml(location) + '</p>'

  // send a 301
  res.statusCode = 301
  res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'text/html; charset=UTF-8')
  res.setHeader('Content-Length', String(Buffer.byteLength(body, 'utf-8')))
  res.setHeader('Location', location)
  res.end(body, 'utf-8')
})

Testing

$ npm test
$ npm run lint

References

• RFC 3986: Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax
• WHATWG URL Living Standard

License

MIT