urlencode only the directory and file names of a URL - php

Question

I need to URL encode just the directory path and file name of a URL using PHP.
So I want to encode something like http://example.com/file name and have it result in http://example.com/file%20name.
Of course, if I do urlencode('http://example.com/file name'); then I end up with http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Ffile+name.
The obvious (to me, anyway) solution is to use parse_url() to split the URL into scheme, host, etc. and then just urlencode() the parts that need it like the path. Then, I would reassemble the URL using http_build_url().
Is there a more elegant solution than that? Or is that basically the way to go?

Answer 1

#deceze definitely got me going down the right path, so go upvote his answer. But here is exactly what worked:
$encoded_url = preg_replace_callback('#://([^/]+)/([^?]+)#', function ($match) {
return '://' . $match[1] . '/' . join('/', array_map('rawurlencode', explode('/', $match[2])));
}, $unencoded_url);
There are a few things to note:
http_build_url requires a PECL install so if you are distributing your code to others (as I am in this case) you might want to avoid it and stick with reg exp parsing like I did here (stealing heavily from #deceze's answer--again, go upvote that thing).
urlencode() is not the way to go! You need rawurlencode() for the path so that spaces get encoded as %20 and not +. Encoding spaces as + is fine for query strings, but not so hot for paths.
This won't work for URLs that need a username/password encoded. For my use case, I don't think I care about those, so I'm not worried. But if your use case is different in that regard, you'll need to take care of that.

Answer 2

As you say, something along these lines should do it:
$parts = parse_url($url);
if (!empty($parts['path'])) {
$parts['path'] = join('/', array_map('rawurlencode', explode('/', $parts['path'])));
}
$url = http_build_url($parts);
Or possibly:
$url = preg_replace_callback('#https?://.+/([^?]+)#', function ($match) {
return join('/', array_map('rawurlencode', explode('/', $match[1])));
}, $url);
(Regex not fully tested though)

Answer 3

function encode_uri($url){
$exp = "{[^0-9a-z_.!~*'();,/?:#&=+$#%\[\]-]}i";
return preg_replace_callback($exp, function($m){
return sprintf('%%%02X',ord($m[0]));
}, $url);
}

Answer 4

Much simpler:
$encoded = implode("/", array_map("rawurlencode", explode("/", $path)));

Answer 5

I think this function ok:
function newUrlEncode ($url) {
return str_replace(array('%3A', '%2F'), '/', urlencode($url));
}