URL encoding (also called percent-encoding) converts characters that are not allowed in URLs into a format that can be safely transmitted. Each unsafe character is replaced with a % followed by two hexadecimal digits.
?, &, =, /, and #?, &, =, /, #, and :%20& → %26= → %3D+ → %2B/ → %2F# → %23@ → %40URL encoding (also called percent encoding) converts characters that are not allowed in URLs into a safe format using a % sign followed by two hex digits. For example, a space becomes %20, and & becomes %26. URLs can only contain certain ASCII characters, so special characters must be encoded to be transmitted safely.
Characters that must be encoded include spaces, !, @, #, $, &, ', (, ), *, +, ,, /, :, ;, =, ?, @, [, ] and many non-ASCII characters. Letters (A-Z, a-z), digits (0-9), and the characters -, _, ., ~ are safe and do not need encoding.
encodeURI encodes a complete URL, leaving characters like /, :, ?, and & intact (since they are valid URL separators). encodeURIComponent encodes every special character including these separators, making it suitable for encoding individual query string values. Use encodeURIComponent when encoding form field values or URL parameters.
Paste the URL-encoded string (containing %XX sequences) into the decoder field and click Decode. Common encoded sequences include %20 (space), %2F (/), %3A (:), %40 (@), %26 (&), %3D (=). This tool decodes all standard percent-encoded characters back to readable text.
A query string is the part of a URL after the ? symbol, containing key=value pairs separated by &. For example: example.com/search?q=hello+world&category=tools. Each value should be URL-encoded to handle spaces and special characters. Spaces in query strings are encoded as + or %20 depending on the encoding style.