Overview
Sometimes customers may want to add URLs that contain characters that are considered unsafe to HTML tiles or simply as links in some documents. These Unsafe characters contain, but are not limited to: { }, [ ], space and #.
This article details the reasons behind avoiding special characters in URLs. Also, it explains the need to encode the special characters should there be a situation that they must be added to the URLs.
Information
As per the Network Working Group RFC 1738 the following characters are considered unsafe to use in URLs:
| Character | Reason |
|---|---|
| The space character | Significant spaces may disappear, and insignificant spaces may be introduced when URLs are transcribed or typeset or subjected to the treatment of word-processing programs. |
< and > |
It is used as the delimiter around URLs in free text. |
The quote mark """ |
It is used to delimit URLs in some systems. |
The character # |
Used in World Wide Web (WWW) and in other systems to delimit a URL from a fragment/anchor identifier that might follow it. |
The character % |
It is used for encodings of other characters. |
{, }, |, \, ^, ~, [, ], and ` |
Gateways and other Transport agents are known sometimes to modify such characters |
Encoding Unsafe Characters for Adding Them to URLs
All unsafe characters must always be encoded within a URL. For example, the character # must be encoded within URLs even in systems that do not normally deal with fragment or anchor identifiers, so that if the URL is copied into another system that does use them, it will not be necessary to change the URL encoding. As these characters are not permitted, Jive can sometimes alter the URL rendering the link useless. These URLs can be encoded using a free online tool.
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