Python encoding characters with urllib.quote

Question

I'm trying to encode non-ASCII characters so I can put them inside an url and use them in urlopen. The problem is that I want an encoding like JavaScript (that for example encodes ó as %C3%B3):

encodeURIComponent(ó)
'%C3%B3'

But urllib.quote in python returns ó as %F3:

urllib.quote(ó)
'%F3'

I want to know how to achieve an encoding like javascript's encodeURIComponent in Python, and also if I can encode non ISO 8859-1 characters like Chinese. Thanks!

related: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6338469/how-to-url-safe-encode-a-string-with-python-and-urllib-quote-is-wrong — Wooble, Jun 21 '11 at 20:05

score 44 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 02 '18 at 09:09

44

in Python 3 the urllib.quote has been renamed to urllib.parse.quote.

Also in Python 3 all strings are unicode strings (the byte strings are called bytes).

Example:

from urllib.parse import quote

print(quote('ó'))
# output: %C3%B3

answered Aug 02 '18 at 09:09

Messa

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Upvoted, I think the Python 3 version of the answer is more relevant these days. – Radu Gheorghiu Jun 08 '22 at 20:50
Note that `encodeURIComponent("!") != quote("!")`, so it's not like JS version as the OP asked. – hldev Nov 15 '22 at 00:59

score 38 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 21 '11 at 20:00

38

You want to make sure you're using unicode.

Example:

import urllib

s = u"ó"
print urllib.quote(s.encode("utf-8"))

Outputs:

%C3%B3

answered Jun 21 '11 at 20:00

Bryan

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score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 15 '22 at 01:06

Note that encodeURIComponent() does not encode the chars A-Z a-z 0-9 - _ . ! ~ * ' ( ). By default urllib.parse.quote() does encode some of these chars, you need to pass the safe chars list to get an equivalent encoder for Python.

In Python 3 the correct solution is

from urllib.parse import quote

quote("ó", safe="!~*'()")

Python encoding characters with urllib.quote

3 Answers3