HTTP URL Address Encoding in Java

Question

My Java standalone application gets a URL (which points to a file) from the user and I need to hit it and download it. The problem I am facing is that I am not able to encod

Answer 1

URLEncoding can encode HTTP URLs just fine, as you've unfortunately discovered. The string you passed in, "http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/first book.pdf", was correctly and completely encoded into a URL-encoded form. You could pass that entire long string of gobbledigook that you got back as a parameter in a URL, and it could be decoded back into exactly the string you passed in.

It sounds like you want to do something a little different than passing the entire URL as a parameter. From what I gather, you're trying to create a search URL that looks like "http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/whateverTheUserPassesIn". The only thing that you need to encode is the "whateverTheUserPassesIn" bit, so perhaps all you need to do is something like this:

String url = "http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/" + 
       URLEncoder.encode(userInput,"UTF-8");

That should produce something rather more valid for you.