PHP rawurlencode() Function: Description, Parameters, Return Value, and Examples

PHP's rawurlencode() function encodes a URL according to RFC 3986, converting all non‑alphanumeric characters except -_. into percent‑encoded sequences.

Signature: string rawurlencode(string $str) Parameter $str is the URL string to be encoded.

The function returns the encoded string, ensuring that characters such as spaces, @, +, % and / are safely represented.

Example 1

<?php
echo '<a href="ftp://user:' . rawurlencode('foo @+%/') . '@ftp.example.com/x.txt">';
?>

Output:

<a href="ftp://user:foo%20%40%2B%25%[email protected]/x.txt">

Example 2

<?php
echo '<a href="http://example.com/department_list_script/' . rawurlencode('sales and marketing/Miami') . '">';
?>

Output:

<a href="http://example.com/department_list_script/sales%20and%20marketing%2FMiami">

Note: rawurldecode() does not decode the plus sign ('+') into a space, whereas urldecode() does.