URL decoder

URL decoder

A URL decoder, also known as URL decoding or percent decoding, is the process of reversing the URL encoding process. It involves converting percent-encoded characters in a URL or URI back to their original characters.

As mentioned earlier, URL encoding is used to represent characters that are not allowed or have special meanings in URLs. These characters are encoded using a percent sign ("%") followed by two hexadecimal digits representing the ASCII code of the character. For example, "%20" represents a space character, "%3F" represents a question mark, and so on.

URL decoding is necessary when you receive a URL or URI that contains percent-encoded characters and you want to convert them back to their original form for proper interpretation or use. This is typically done when processing URLs in web applications, APIs, or any situation where URL parameters need to be extracted and used.

For example, if you have a URL like: https://example.com/search?q=hello%20world%3F

The URL decoder would convert "%20" back to a space and "%3F" back to a question mark, resulting in the decoded URL: https://example.com/search?q=hello world?

URL decoding ensures that the original intent of the URL is preserved and that special characters are correctly interpreted. Many programming languages and libraries provide functions or methods for performing URL decoding operations.