Test if string is URL encoded in PHP

Question

How can I test if a string is URL encoded?

Which of the following approaches is better?

• Search the string for characters which would be encoded, which

Answer 1

Here is something i just put together.

if ( urlencode(urldecode($data)) === $data){
    echo 'string urlencoded';
} else {
    echo 'string is NOT urlencoded';
}

Answer 2

I think there's no foolproof way to do it. For example, consider the following:

$t = "A+B";

Is that an URL encoded "A B" or does it need to be encoded to "A%2BB"?

Answer 3

What about:

if (urldecode(trim($url)) == trim($url)) { $url_form = 'decoded'; }
  else { $url_form = 'encoded'; }

Will not work with double encoding but this is out of scope anyway I suppose?

Answer 4

send a variable that flags the decode when you already getting data from an url.

?path=folder/new%20file.txt&decode=1

Answer 5

i have one trick :

you can do this to prevent doubly encode. Every time first decode then again encode;

$string = urldecode($string);

Then do again

$string = urlencode($string);

Performing this way we can avoid double encode :)

Answer 6

I am using the following test to see if strings have been urlencoded:

if(urlencode($str) != str_replace(['%','+'], ['%25','%2B'], $str))

If a string has already been urlencoded, the only characters that will changed by double encoding are % (which starts all encoded character strings) and + (which replaces spaces.) Change them back and you should have the original string.

Let me know if this works for you.