Converting characters into a URL friendly format

There is a handy command in Actionscript that I’d previously never encountered until this week:

escape()

If you’re receiving a text input and needing to send it out to a URL, for example in a search box, you need to convert any special characters into character codes before you request the URL. For example, a space should be sent as %20.

The escape() command allows you to do this with one command rather than having to search through character by character and reference it to a character codes array.

Here’s a simple function that utilises it:

public function processSearchTerm(s:String):void
{
var URLString:String = escape(s);
_rModel.searchTerm = URLString;
}

Calling this function, eg:

var oldString:String = "a test string";
var newString:String = processSearchTerm(testString);
trace(newString);

Should return:

a%20test%20string

Hopefully if you weren’t aware of it already, it will save you as much time as it did me!