Encode portion of path using PHP - php

Question

I need to encode only part of the $delete path. Only the # in the email address and # in the property. I know how to use urlencode for the whole thing but not on just that. The way it works, is it loops through to get the properties and most of them include # in the name. Anyone who can help modify so that this works would be greatly appreciated!
The delete:
$delete = "http://admin:12345#192.168.245.133/#api/deki/DELETE:users/$user_id/properties/%s";
Here you can see $user_id this will be an email address BUT the # symbol needs to be encoded.
The properties which follow at the very end, has a # within the name, this needs to also be encoded. For example, one property name userprofile#external.created_date
Here is the code so far:
<?php
$user_id="john_smith#ourwiki.com";
$url=('http://admin:12345#192.168.245.133/#api/deki/users/=john_smith#ourwiki.com/properties');
$xmlString=file_get_contents($url);
$delete = "http://admin:12345#192.168.245.133/#api/deki/DELETE:users/$user_id/properties/%s";
$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($xmlString);
function curl_fetch($url,$username,$password,$method='DELETE')
{
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, $method);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE); // returns output as a string instead of echoing it
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_USERPWD,"$username:$password"); // if your server requires basic auth do this
return curl_exec($ch);
}
foreach($xml->property as $property) {
$name = $property['name']; // the name is stored in the attribute
curl_fetch(sprintf($delete, $name),'admin','12345');
}
?>

Answer 1

Have you tried this? str_replace($string, array('#', '#'), array('%40', '%23'));
The urlencode function does not allow you to limit it to a subset of characters.