[#absl-UrlEscapePlus]
= xref:absl.adoc[absl]::UrlEscapePlus
:relfileprefix: ../
:mrdocs:

Escapes a string so it can be safely used as a value for application/x‐www‐form‐urlencoded (HTML form submissions).

== Synopsis

Declared in `<absl/strings/escaping.h>`

[source,cpp,subs="verbatim,replacements,macros,-callouts"]
----
[[nodiscard]]
std::string
UrlEscapePlus(std::string_view input);
----

== Description

Historically web browsers have also used this form of escaping for query parameters.

UrlEscapePlus() differs from UrlEscape() in that space (' ') is encoded to plus ("+") instead of "%20". According to the URI specification (RFC 3986), the correct way to escape a space anywhere in a URL (including the query string) is "%20". Using "%20" in a query parameter will work universally.

Some strict URL parsers (especially outside of web browsers/web servers) follow RFC 3986 strictly and will treat a literal '+' in the query string as a literal plus sign, rather than decoding it to a space.

Recommendation: Use UrlEscapePlus() only if you are specifically implementing or interacting with a system that strictly expects "application/x‐www‐form‐urlencoded" formatting. For general URL construction, UrlEscape() is the correct and safest choice.

Example (encoding "gift for mom & dad" as a URL query parameter):

std::string url = absl::StrFormat("https://www.google.com/search?q=%s", absl::UrlEscapePlus( "gift for mom & dad")); assert(url == "https://www.google.com/search?q=gift+for+mom+%26+dad");

== Return Value

The escaped string.

[NOTE]
====
The return value https://en.cppreference.com/cpp/language/attributes/nodiscard[should not be discarded^].
====
== Parameters

[cols="1,4"]
|===
| Name| Description
| *input*
| The URL component to escape.
|===


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