problem with ampersand(&) in passing values through URL

[archana vishwanath]

Hi!
This is the problem I face some times when using get method to pass
values from one page to other.If the values im trying to pass has some ampersands(&)
(e.g) say <a href="http://localhost/file2.jsp?value=aa<b rel="nofollow">&&&&&</b>aaa" target="_blank">http://localhost/file2.jsp?value=aa&&&&&aaa
purposely I have added some ampersands for value and im sure this will end up in problem
Is there any way to overcome this???

[Deepak A]

u make that value as String.
I mean.
String s = a&&&a;
and then pass in the url as http://url?value=s;

[velmurugan veerappan]

hi,
i think this is not possible. because every query string key-value pairse
is parsed using &.

thanks,
velmurugan veerappan

[Bear Bibeault]

Of course it is possible, and simply making it a string will do nothing for you.
All your URL values should be URL-encoded. You can easily accomplish this with the help of the java.net.URLEncoder class. This will encode special characters (such as the &) to a form that will not confuse the format of the URL.
[ April 01, 2004: Message edited by: Bear Bibeault ]

[Mishra Anshu]

Hello Bear,
Can you provide an exapmle or some snippet of the code for using
this encoder class.
On Google...there are lots....
A basic snippet would solve the purpose

[Bear Bibeault]

There's not much to it. For the example value in the original post:

 java.net.URLEncoder.encode( "aa&&&&&aaa", "UTF-8" ) 

will produce:

 aa%26%26%26%26%26aaa 

which is URL-safe.