international characters in url

[Peter Kirk]

Hi

I need some help with sending "international" charcters in a parameter
string to a web application. I need to send the following for example:

http://localhost/myapp/TestAdmin.aspx?sort=å

Even though I see the Danish letter 'å' (a little 'a' with a circle over) in
the url, and if I "view source" on the web-page, the application itself
receives a strange character combination when it tries to extract the
parameter from the request.

If I do:
string sort = Request.Params["sort"];
then the variable sort recieves the value:
Ã¥

How can get the real value 'å' ?

Thanks,
Peter

 

[Marc Gravell]

RFC 1738: "...Only alphanumerics [0-9a-zA-Z], the special characters
"$-_.+!*'()," and reserved characters used for their reserved purposes may
be used unencoded within a URL."

You need to url-encode the string; see HttpUtility.UrlEncode

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/s2x4538s.aspx

Note that it is already decoded when reading a request via the methods you
are using, hence it is decoding a non-encoded string, which is why it is
currently wrong. The url is incorrect.

Marc

 

[Marc Gravell]

and for ref, the url you want is probably:
http://localhost/myapp/TestAdmin.aspx?sort=å

Marc

 

[Peter Kirk]

and for ref, the url you want is probably:
http://localhost/myapp/TestAdmin.aspx?sort=å

Great, thanks! I had tried HtmlEncode/Decode and UrlEncode/Decode (now I
realise only UrlEncode is required), and I now see that only the parameter
list should be url-encoded - I tried the whole url...

Thanks,
Peter

 

[Marc Gravell]

I now see that only the parameter list should be url-encoded
Technically, just the *individual components* of the list, not the
entire query-string itself (otherwise the separaters (?&= etc) will be
encoded, which you don't want). But I think you "get it", so I'll shut
up.

Happy coding,

Marc