curl/docs/libcurl/curl_easy_escape.md

---

c: Copyright (C) Daniel Stenberg, , et al. SPDX-License-Identifier: curl Title: curl_easy_escape Section: 3 Source: libcurl See-also:

• curl_easy_unescape (3)
• curl_free (3) ---

NAME

curl_easy_escape - URL encodes the given string

SYNOPSIS

#include <curl/curl.h>

char *curl_easy_escape(CURL *curl, const char *string, int length);

DESCRIPTION

This function converts the given input string to a URL encoded string and returns that as a new allocated string. All input characters that are not a-z, A-Z, 0-9, '-', '.', '_' or '~' are converted to their "URL escaped" version (%NN where NN is a two-digit hexadecimal number).

If length is set to 0 (zero), curl_easy_escape(3) uses strlen() on the input string to find out the size. This function does not accept input strings longer than CURL_MAX_INPUT_LENGTH (8 MB).

Since 7.82.0, the curl parameter is ignored. Prior to that there was per-handle character conversion support for some old operating systems such as TPF, but it was otherwise ignored.

You must curl_free(3) the returned string when you are done with it.

ENCODING

libcurl is typically not aware of, nor does it care about, character encodings. curl_easy_escape(3) encodes the data byte-by-byte into the URL encoded version without knowledge or care for what particular character encoding the application or the receiving server may assume that the data uses.

The caller of curl_easy_escape(3) must make sure that the data passed in to the function is encoded correctly.

EXAMPLE

int main(void)
{
  CURL *curl = curl_easy_init();
  if(curl) {
    char *output = curl_easy_escape(curl, "data to convert", 15);
    if(output) {
      printf("Encoded: %s\n", output);
      curl_free(output);
    }
    curl_easy_cleanup(curl);
  }
}

AVAILABILITY

Added in 7.15.4 and replaces the old curl_escape(3) function.

RETURN VALUE

A pointer to a null-terminated string or NULL if it failed.