Encoding URL strings with regular expression

Question

I'm trying to replace several different characters with different values. For example, if I have: #love hate then I would like to do is get back %23love%20hate

Is it something to do with groups? i tried to understand using groups but i really didn't understand it.

Answer 1

You can try to do this:

String encodedstring = URLEncoder.encode("#love hate","UTF-8");

It will give you the result you want. To revers it you should do this:

String loveHate = URLDecoder.decode(encodedstring);