Encode / decode URLs

Question

What's the recommended way of encoding and decoding entire URLs in Go? I am aware of the methods url.QueryEscape and url.QueryUnescape, but they don't seem to be exactly what I am looking for. Specifically I am looking for methods like JavaScript's encodeURIComponent and decodeURIComponent.

Answer 1

You can do all the URL encoding you want with the net/url module. It doesn't break out the individual encoding functions for the parts of the URL, you have to let it construct the whole URL. Having had a squint at the source code I think it does a very good and standards compliant job.

Here is an example (playground link)

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "net/url"
)

func main() {

    Url, err := url.Parse("http://www.example.com")
    if err != nil {
        panic("boom")
    }

    Url.Path += "/some/path/or/other_with_funny_characters?_or_not/"
    parameters := url.Values{}
    parameters.Add("hello", "42")
    parameters.Add("hello", "54")
    parameters.Add("vegetable", "potato")
    Url.RawQuery = parameters.Encode()

    fmt.Printf("Encoded URL is %q\n", Url.String())
}

Which prints-

Encoded URL is "http://www.example.com/some/path/or/other_with_funny_characters%3F_or_not/?vegetable=potato&hello=42&hello=54"