URL Encode — Text Encoding for URLs

URL encoding (percent-encoding) is a way to represent characters that are not safe for URLs. Each such character is replaced with % followed by two hexadecimal digits. For example, space becomes %20.

Required: spaces, non-ASCII characters, and special URL characters: ?, &, =, #, %, +. Letters A-Z, a-z, digits 0-9, and characters -_.~ remain unchanged.

URL encoding preserves readability: "hello world" → "hello%20world". Base64 completely transforms data: "hello" → "aGVsbG8=". Use URL encoding for URL parameters, Base64 for binary data.

When passing data in URL parameters (?query=value), creating links with special characters, sending data via GET requests, working with APIs that accept URL parameters.