PHP urlencode - encode only the filename and dont touch the slashes

Question

http://www.example.com/some_folder/some file [that] needs "to" be (encoded).zip
urlencode($myurl);

The problem is that urlencode will also encode the slashes which makes the URL unusable. How can i encode just the last filename ?

Modern

Answer 1

Try this:

$str = 'http://www.example.com/some_folder/some file [that] needs "to" be (encoded).zip';
$pos = strrpos($str, '/') + 1;
$result = substr($str, 0, $pos) . urlencode(substr($str, $pos));

You're looking for the last occurrence of the slash sign. The part before it is ok so just copy that. And urlencode the rest.

Falito

Working perfectly with the missing ")" at the end :) – Modern

I would also use rawurlencode instead of urlencode for filenames – Bevy

Are we positive that a forward slash could not exist in a URL somewhere after a ?, even if it shouldn't be there? Technically it should be escaped, but what if it's not. ie. "example.com/thing?redirect=www.example.com/other-thing". Maybe it doesn't matter because the URL is not valid, but would there be a solution to properly encode this entire string? – Algophobia

Answer 2

First of all, here's why you should be using rawurlencode instead of urlencode.

To answer your question, instead of searching for a needle in a haystack and risking not encoding other possible special characters in your URL, just encode the whole thing and then fix the slashes (and colon).

<?php
$myurl = 'http://www.example.com/some_folder/some file [that] needs "to" be (encoded).zip';
$myurl = rawurlencode($myurl);
$myurl = str_replace('%3A',':',str_replace('%2F','/',$myurl));

Results in this:

http://www.example.com/some_folder/some%20file%20%5Bthat%5D%20needs%20%22to%22%20be%20%28encoded%29.zip

Inhalation

Answer 3

Pull the filename off and escape it.

$temp = explode('/', $myurl);
$filename = array_pop($temp);

$newFileName = urlencode($filename);

$myNewUrl = implode('/', array_push($newFileName));

Puke

this is a slow solution. No need to dump the string into an array. – Falito

Answer 4

Similar to @Jeff Puckett's answer but as a function with arrays as replacements:

function urlencode_url($url) {
    return str_replace(['%3A','%2F'], [':', '/'], rawurlencode($url));
}

Fourdimensional