On Mar 11, 2010, at 11:10 AM, nitin gupta wrote:
I am using the following to solve the problem, any ideas to improve
it in terms of efficiency or otherwise are welcome:
function encodeurl($url) {
$reserved = array(
":" => '!%3A!ui',
"/" => '!%2F!ui',
"?" => '!%3F!ui',
"#" => '!%23!ui',
"[" => '!%5B!ui',
"]" => '!%5D!ui',
"@" => '!%40!ui',
"!" => '!%21!ui',
"$" => '!%24!ui',
"&" => '!%26!ui',
"'" => '!%27!ui',
"(" => '!%28!ui',
")" => '!%29!ui',
"*" => '!%2A!ui',
"+" => '!%2B!ui',
"," => '!%2C!ui',
";" => '!%3B!ui',
"=" => '!%3D!ui',
);
$url = rawurlencode(rawurldecode($url));
$url = preg_replace(array_values($reserved),
array_keys($reserved), $url);
return $url;
}
There's an old quote [1] that seems somewhat apt here:
Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll
use regular expressions." Now they have two problems.
That's not entirely apt, as your regular expression might as well be
done with str_replace(), but you are adding problems rather than
removing them. You should really scrap this whole thing and take a few
steps back rather than adding more to it; this will break URLs due to
flaws in the fundamental approach.
rawurlencode and rawurldecode are meant to be used on fragments of
URLs, not whole URLs. It's impossible to properly encode an entire
URL without first breaking it up into component parts, because the
different parts require different encoding. For example, "/" should
be encoded in a query string, but not in a path. Treating it the same
everywhere is why you're having the problem with delimiters being
encoded. The preg_replace() only hides this problem, while
introducing new problems (not encoding things that should be encoded);
it's not a solution.
To illustrate the problem, consider this URL:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22a%26b%22
That's a Google search for the phrase "a&b". Your function turns that
into this:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22a&b%22
That's a Google search for "a, which returns completely different
results.
Backing up, you apparently have input that looks like this:
http://example.com/path with spaces/
That's not a valid URL, so it needs to be fixed somewhere. Ideally it
would be fixed at the source, but if that's not an option, you can fix
this specific problem simply with str_replace(' ', '%20', $url); That
won't break anything else because spaces aren't URL delimiters. I'm
guessing your input has more complex problems with invalid URLs as
your attempted solution is more broad in scope. It's hard to say what
you should do without knowing more about the input. What does the raw
XML look like?
[1]
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/06/regular-expressions-now-you-have-two-problems.html
--
Scott Reynen
MakeDataMakeSense.com
