Is there a javascript function that takes a string and converts it into another string that is percent-encoded? That way something like \"This Guy\" turns into \"This%20Guy\".>
encodeURI, encodeURIComponent or escape will work the same way for your string, but they differ in details.
encodeURI is just for escaping URLs
encodeURIComponent also escapes = and &
escape works differently with non-ASCII unicode symbols
encodeURI("Ω") === encodeURIComponent("Ω") === "%CE%A9"
escape("Ω") === "%u03A9"
if you need to send a string as part of request, use encodeURIComponent