How do you URL encode parameters in Erlang?

Question

I\'m using httpc:request to post some data to a remote service. I have the post working but the data in the body() of the post comes through as is, without any URL-encoding

Answer 1

Here's a simple function that does the job. It's designed to work directly with inets httpc.

%% @doc A function to URL encode form data.
%% @spec url_encode(formdata()).

-spec(url_encode(formdata()) -> string()).
url_encode(Data) ->
    url_encode(Data,"").

url_encode([],Acc) ->
    Acc;

url_encode([{Key,Value}|R],"") ->
    url_encode(R, edoc_lib:escape_uri(Key) ++ "=" ++ edoc_lib:escape_uri(Value));
url_encode([{Key,Value}|R],Acc) ->
    url_encode(R, Acc ++ "&" ++ edoc_lib:escape_uri(Key) ++ "=" ++ edoc_lib:escape_uri(Value)).

Example usage:

httpc:request(post, {"http://localhost:3000/foo", [], 
                    "application/x-www-form-urlencoded",
                    url_encode([{"username", "bob"}, {"password", "123456"}])}
             ,[],[]).