How-To work with URL encoding

When working with the liberate::net::url class, it may be useful to encode and decode strings using the percent encoding defined in RFC3986. For the most part, this amounts to replacing some reserved characters with a percent sign followed by the hexadecimal value of the ASCII code representing the character – so that ` ` becomes %20, etc.

Using URL encoding

#include <liberate/string/urlencode.h>

auto res = liberate::string::urlencode("foo bar");
assert ("foo%20bar" == res);

Note that the urlencode function only encodes some reserved characters, while the urldecode function decodes any percent-encoded character. This means they do not provide the exact inverse function of each other.

Using URL encoding

auto res = liberate::string::urldecode("foo%2Fbar");
assert("foo/bar" == res);

auto back = liberate::string::urlencode(res);
assert("foo/bar" == back);
assert(res != back);