How can I replace the "+" plus sign with its corresponding url encoding of "%2B"?

Question

I'm having some trouble replacing the "+" sign with its urlencoded string of "%2B". How can I do this?

This is what I've tried:

Text Entered into text box:

plus(+) 

I then urlencode the string:

$string = urlencode($string); 

String now looks like:

plus%28+%29 

I want to have the "+" urlencoded, or else when I urldecode() the data to display in browser I end up with:

plus( )  

because urldecode() interprets the "+" to be a space.

I tried using php's str_replace() but I keep getting a "NULL" returned as the value for "$new_string":

$new_string = str_replace('+', '%2B', $string); 

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

That is strange. When I use urlencode on plus(+) I get plus%28%2B%29. Make sure you're using it correctly.

You might also try rawurlencode. It will encode spaces as %20 instead of +.

Answer 2

That helped me:

function _rawurlencode($string) {     $string = rawurlencode(str_replace('+','%2B',$string));     return $string; }