Decode a string in Java

java urldecode
Dave picture Dave · Mar 23, 2011 · Viewed 7.7k times · Source

How do I properly decode the following string in Java

http%3A//www.google.ru/search%3Fhl%3Dru%26q%3Dla+mer+powder%26btnG%3D%u0420%A0%u0421%u045F%u0420%A0%u0421%u2022%u0420%A0%u0421%u2018%u0420%u040E%u0420%u0453%u0420%A0%u0421%u201D+%u0420%A0%u0420%u2020+Google%26lr%3D%26rlz%3D1I7SKPT_ru

When I use URLDecoder.decode() I the following error

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: URLDecoder: Illegal hex characters in escape (%) pattern - For input string: "u0"

Thanks, Dave

Answer

Vivien Barousse picture Vivien Barousse · Mar 23, 2011

According to Wikipedia, "there exist a non-standard encoding for Unicode characters: %uxxxx, where xxxx is a Unicode value". Continuing: "This behavior is not specified by any RFC and has been rejected by the W3C".

Your URL contains such tokens, and the Java URLDecoder implementation doesn't support those.

Related questions

Is there a common Java library that will handle URL encoding/decoding for a collection of strings?

I often have to url encode or decode a large collection or array of strings. Besides iterating through them and using the static URLDecoder.decode(string, "UTF-8"), are there any libraries out there that will make this type of operation …

Read More
How do I convert a String to an int in Java?

How can I convert a String to an int in Java? My String contains only numbers, and I want to return the number it represents. For example, given the string "1234" the result should be the number 1234.

Read More
How do I declare and initialize an array in Java?

How do I declare and initialize an array in Java?

Read More