URL encoding not working properly

Question

I'm writing my first web application (still!), and have a problem activating user accounts.

The way I've got it set up is that the new user fills out a form with name, email address, and all that. They submit it, and my application sends a link to the email address they provide. They click that link, which passes (by way of a GET) a random code and their email address - activating their account.

In order to do some debugging, I thought I'd try this from different email services. Hotmail works, my own email works, but gmail doesn't. If you click on my 'activate' link in gmail, a 404 Not Found error pops up. So I've narrowed the problem down to how it encodes the link.

Here's the link in gmail (which doesn't work):

mywebsite.com/PHP+App+Files/App1/ln_activate.php?x=userx%40gmail.com&y=9c7b35bbdf1b0d24b0eda62f670c1456

When I change that one to this:

mywebsite.com/PHP%20App%20Files/App1/[email protected]&y=9c7b35bbdf1b0d24b0eda62f670c1456

... it does work. I can see what the differences are, but why does gmail do that, and does anyone have any suggestions for a workaround?

Thanks!

I don't decode it on my end, and I send it using phpmailer.... is that what you mean? — Reg H
– Reg H, Commented Dec 8, 2010 at 1:41

Paul Schreiber · Accepted Answer · 2010-12-08 01:46:08Z

1

I bet the problem is that urlencode() translates spaces to + instead of %20. Call rawurlencode() instead.

answered Dec 8, 2010 at 1:46

Paul Schreiber

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1 Comment

Reg H Over a year ago

Thanks Paul - one thing I'm going to try is to remove spaces. I thought I did, but missed some.

Xtophe · Accepted Answer · 2010-12-08 01:45:07Z

0

I suggest you NOT to use spaces in the name of folders in any webserver, I think this will solve your error 404 problem :

Rename PHP App Files into PHP_App_Files

Also I personnally don't like to use high caps as usually servers make the difference between low caps and high caps. But this is a personal habit.

You can also use urlencode() and urldecode() to process your URL parameters.

answered Dec 8, 2010 at 1:45

Xtophe

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2 Comments

Reg H Over a year ago

I think this is correct, and will try it later on this AM. Honestly, I thought I got rid of spaces.... but now that I look at it, I didn't.

ZoFreX Over a year ago

This is really, really, not the correct solution to the problem. You are avoiding the fact that you are not escaping correctly by removing a known problematic input. The problem is, other problematic inputs exist, and sooner or later you may run into them.

skwigger · Accepted Answer · 2010-12-08 01:27:25Z

0

Try base64 encoding the email address for the link in the email. Then, base64 decode it on the page that processes the verification.

answered Dec 8, 2010 at 1:27

skwigger

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Reg H Over a year ago

Thanks - I'll read up on base64 encoding and see how it goes.

Pramendra Gupta · Accepted Answer · 2010-12-08 01:40:35Z

0

solution is

$url ="some url";
$encoded = urlencode($url);
$decoded = urldecode($encoded);

This is the perfect solution.

answered Dec 8, 2010 at 1:40

Pramendra Gupta

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Reg H Over a year ago

Thanks JapanPro. I've already got 'urlencode' in there, and I think the problem lies in the fact that I've got spaces in my path, which I shouldn't.

ZoFreX · Accepted Answer · 2010-12-08 01:52:35Z

0

URL encoding in PHP is actually quite complicated.

There are several functions you need to know about in order to properly form a link in HTML: urlencode, rawurlencode, and htmlentities. Here's a rather contrived example of using all three:

<?php
    $query_string = 'foo=' . urlencode($foo) . '&bar=' . urlencode($bar);
    echo '<a href="http://example.com/department_list_script/',
    rawurlencode('sales and marketing/Miami'),
    '?',
    htmlentities($query_string),
    '">';
?>

'; ?>

Your problem is being caused by improper encoding. Hopefully with this example and the PHP docs you can fix it!

answered Dec 8, 2010 at 1:52

ZoFreX

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