llEscapeURL

string llEscapeURL(string URL)

Returns an escaped/encoded version of url, replacing spaces with %20 etc.

Returns the string that is the URL-escaped version of URL (replacing spaces with %20, etc.).

This function returns the UTF-8 encoded escape codes for selected characters.

Parameters

URL (string)

Technical Details

Return Type: string
Energy: 10

string str = "http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL Portal";

default
{
    state_entry()
    {
        llOwnerSay("Plain string:\n\t" + str);
        // output: "http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL Portal"

        llOwnerSay("Escaped string:\n\t" + llEscapeURL(str));
        // output: "http%3A%2F%2Fwiki%2Esecondlife%2Ecom%2Fwiki%2FLSL%20Portal"

        llOwnerSay("Escaped string unescaped again:\n\t" + llUnescapeURL( llEscapeURL(str) ));
        // output: "http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL Portal"

        // because escaping and unescaping are exact opposite
        // and unescaping an escaped string returns the original


        //  For readability's sake it would make more sense to do:
        llOwnerSay("For readability's sake:\n\t" + "http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/" + llEscapeURL("LSL Portal"));
        // output: "http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL%20Portal"
    }
}

Caveats

This function is not appropriate for escaping a URL all at once, because the : after the protocol and all of the / characters delimiting the various parts will be escaped. Instead, build the URL in parts, escaping parts of the path and query string arguments as needed.

For example, to properly encode a query parameter value:

// Good: Only escape the part that needs escaping
string base_url = "http://example.com/api?param=";
string param_value = "hello world";
string full_url = base_url + llEscapeURL(param_value);
// Result: "http://example.com/api?param=hello%20world"

// Bad: Don't escape the entire URL at once
string bad_url = llEscapeURL("http://example.com/api?param=hello world");
// Result: "http%3A%2F%2Fexample%2Ecom%2Fapi%3Fparam%3Dhello%20world"

Notes

The function escapes all characters except [a-zA-Z0-9] to %xx where xx is the hexadecimal value in UTF-8 byte form
If a character requires more than one byte in UTF-8 form, multiple %xx sequences are returned chained together
The SL viewer pretty prints URLs when converting them to clickable links in chat and dialogs. To confirm a URL was escaped correctly, right-click and copy it, then paste into the chat bar to inspect; or wrap with <nolink> tags; or examine your chat log file; or display with a function like llSetText

llEscapeURL

Caveats

Notes

See Also