asp.net - HttpServerUtility.UrlPathEncode vs HttpServerUtility.UrlEncode

Question

What's the difference between HttpServerUtility.UrlPathEncode and HttpServerUtility.UrlEncode? And when should I choose one over the other?

Answer 1

UrlEncode is useful for query string values (so to the left or especially, right, of each =).

In this url, foo, fooval, bar, and barval should EACH be UrlEncode'd separately:

http://www.example.com/whatever?foo=fooval&bar=barval

UrlEncode encodes everything, such as ?, &, =, and /, accented or other non-ASCII characters, etc, into %-style encoding, except space which it encodes as a +. This is form-style encoding, and is best for something you intend to put in the querystring (or maybe between two slashes in a url) as a parameter without it getting all jiggy with the url's control characters (like &). Otherwise an unfortunately placed & or = in a user's form input or db value value could break things.

EDIT: Uri.EscapeDataString is a very close match to UrlEncode, and may be preferable, though I don't know the exact differences.

UrlPathEncode is useful for the rest of the query string, it affects everything to the left of the ?.

In this url, the entire url (from http to barval) should be run through UrlPathEncode.

http://www.example.com/whatever?foo=fooval&bar=barval

UrlPathEncode does NOT encode ?, &, =, or /. It DOES, however, like UrlEncode, encode accented/non-ASCII characters with % notation, and space also becomes %20. This is useful to make sure the url is valid, since spaces and accented characters are not. It won't touch your querystring (everything to the right of ?), so you have to encode that with UrlEncode, above.