The two kinds of escaping

Most broken links come from using the wrong one of these:

  • Escape a single component (the default) encodes a value so it can sit inside a URL as one piece. Spaces become %20, ampersands become %26, and slashes are encoded too. Use it for a search term, a file name, a callback value, anything you are about to drop into a query string. A file name is usually turned into a slug first, and the Letter Case Converter makes one.
  • Escape the whole URL encodes the characters that would break a link while leaving the separators alone, so the question mark, the ampersands, the slashes and the hash stay where they are. Use it when a complete address has a stray space or a non-ASCII character in it.

The two checkboxes are mutually exclusive: selecting one clears the other, so you cannot accidentally apply both.

Reading an address

The Analyse mode is the third tab, and it is the one worth remembering. It breaks a URL into the pieces you actually need to debug:

  • scheme, host and port
  • path
  • the raw query string
  • the fragment after the hash
  • and a table of every query parameter, decoded, in the order they appear

It is the fastest way to check what a tracking link is really carrying, or to confirm that a parameter arrived with the value you expected. If one of those parameters holds a Base64 value, the Base64 tool decodes it once you have read it out of the address.

How to use it

  1. Paste the URL or the bare value into the input panel.
  2. Pick the mode: Encode, Decode or Analyse.
  3. For encoding, choose the scope — single component or whole URL — based on where the result is going.
  4. Copy the result, or download it as a text file.

Good to know

  • This tool writes spaces as %20. The plus sign is a form-encoding convention; in a query string both work, but %20 is the safe choice in a path.
  • When decoding, the tool tries a full component decode first and falls back to a looser one, so a URL with encoded separators still comes apart.
  • An address pasted without a scheme is still analysed — it is read as if it started with https://.
  • Encoding is not security. A percent-encoded value is decoded by the server on arrival, so never hide a password in a URL parameter.
  • The analysis shows decoded parameter values, which makes it a quick check for a truncated or double-encoded value.