Convert special characters from PHP variables?

Question

I can print a url with the following:

<?php print $base_url . $node_url ?>

What is the standard PHP way of converting special characters?

So instead of: http://time.com/3525666/ebola-psychology-fear-symptoms/

I need http%3A%2F%2Ftime.com%2F3525666%2Febola-psychology-fear-symptoms%2F

Answer 1

You would use urlencode for that sort of escaping.

Other escaping functions exist for other purposes, like htmlspecialchars for making text output safely for HTML display.

Answer 2

use his function in php , it is built in function to encode in url format

  urlencode(); 

Answer 3

Just to add, htmlspecialchars, as mentioned above in the comment can take care of few html entities, not all of them.

Use htmlentities() instead:

$query_string = 'foo=' .urlencode($foo) . '&bar=' . urlencode($bar);echo '';