how to url encode in android?

Question

I am using grid view for displaying image using xml parsing,i got some exception like

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Illegal character in path a

Answer 1

You don't encode the entire URL, only parts of it that come from "unreliable sources" like.

String query = URLEncoder.encode("Hare Krishna ", "utf-8");
String url = "http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=" + query;

Answer 2

URLEncoder should be used only to encode queries, use java.net.URI class instead:

URI uri = new URI(
    "http",
    "www.theblacksheeponline.com", 
    "/party_img/thumbspps/912big_361999096_Flicking Off Douchebag.jpg",
    null);
String request = uri.toASCIIString();

Answer 3

you can use below method

public String parseURL(String url, Map<String, String> params)
{
    Builder builder = Uri.parse(url).buildUpon();
    for (String key : params.keySet())
    {
        builder.appendQueryParameter(key, params.get(key));
    }
    return builder.build().toString();
}

Answer 4

I recently wrote a quick URI encoder for this purpose. It even handles unicode characters. http://www.dmurph.com/2011/01/java-uri-encoder/

Answer 5

Also you can use this

private static final String ALLOWED_URI_CHARS = "@#&=*+-_.,:!?()/~'%";
String urlEncoded = Uri.encode(path, ALLOWED_URI_CHARS);

it's the most simple method

Answer 6

As Ben says in his comment, you should not use URLEncoder.encode to full URLs because you will change the semantics of the URL per the following example from the W3C:

The URIs http://www.w3.org/albert/bertram/marie-claude and http://www.w3.org/albert/bertram%2Fmarie-claude are NOT identical, as in the second case the encoded slash does not have hierarchical significance.

Instead, you should encode component parts of a URL independently per the following from RFC 3986 Section 2.4

Under normal circumstances, the only time when octets within a URI are percent-encoded is during the process of producing the URI from its component parts. This is when an implementation determines which of the reserved characters are to be used as subcomponent delimiters and which can be safely used as data. Once produced, a URI is always in its percent-encoded form.

So, in short, for your case you should encode/escape your filename and then assemble the URL.