Adobe ColdFusion 8

URLDecode

Description

Decodes a URL-encoded string.

Returns

A copy of a string, decoded.

Category

Conversion functions, Other functions, String functions

Function syntax

URLDecode(urlEncodedString[, charset])

See also

URLEncodedFormat; "Tags and functions for globalizing applications" in the ColdFusion Developer's Guide

ColdFusion MX 6.1: Changed the default charset: the default charset is the character encoding of the URL scope.

ColdFusion MX:

  • Changed Unicode support: ColdFusion supports the Java UCS-2 representation of Unicode character values 0-65535. (Earlier releases supported ASCII values.)
  • Added the charset parameter.

Parameters

Parameter

Description
urlEncodedString

URL-encoded string or a variable that contains one.
charset

The character encoding in which the URL is encoded. Optional.

The following list includes commonly used values:

  • utf-8
  • iso-8859-1
  • windows-1252
  • us-ascii
  • shift_jis
  • iso-2022-jp
  • euc-jp
  • euc-kr
  • big5
  • euc-cn
  • utf-16

For more information on character encoding, see: www.w3.org/International/O-charset.html.

The default value is the character encoding of the URL scope. See SetEncoding.

Usage

URL encoding formats some characters with a percent sign and the two-character hexadecimal representation of the character. For example, a character whose code is 129 is encoded as %81. A space is encoded with a plus sign.

Query strings in HTTP are always URL-encoded.

Example

This example creates, encodes, and decodes a string that contains ASCII character codes:

<cfscript>
    // Build string
    s = "";
    for (c = 1; c lte 256; c = c + 1)
    {
        s = s & chr(c);
    }
    // Encode string and display result
    enc = URLEncodedFormat(s);
    WriteOutput("Encoded string is: '#enc#'.<br>");
    // Decode and compare result with original
    dec = URLDecode(enc);
    if (dec neq s)
    {
        WriteOutput("Decoded is not the same as encoded.");
    }
    else
    {
        WriteOutput("All's quiet on the Western front.");
    }
</cfscript>