Avoiding equal and ampersand conversion in PHP - php

Question

I have a php variable containing some special characters, inside a Codeigniter 3 controller:
page_url = 'search=' . $expression . '&page';
In a template, I use this variable:
In the in the browser I see the characters mentioned above in this form:
posts/search?search%3Dharum%26page=2
The = sign turns to %3D, "&" to %26.
I tried page_url = urldecode($page_url); but it does not work.
How do I keep the original characters?

Answer 1

Please use utf8 decode and try again
echo utf8_decode(urldecode("search%3Dharum%26page=2"));
Try this decode function.
function decode($url)
{
$special = array(
'%21' => '!', '\\' => '%5C', // so on you need to define.
);
foreach($special as $key => $value)
{
$result = str_replace($key, $value, $url);
}
return $result;
}
echo decode("search=%21");

Answer 2

Your problem is not that easy to reproduce. The following rextester demo produces the text in the form you request, using basically your code: http://rextester.com/YTY13099
<?php
$page=2;
$expression='harum';
$page_url = 'posts/search?search=' . $expression . '&page=' . $page;
?>
resulting in
Link
Could it be that the problem is caused by that fact that the script is part of a codeigniter controller? I do not know anything about codeigniter but I can image that further processing takes place there.