How to escape a pipe ( | ) symbol for url_encode in python

Question

I am facing a problem with urllib.url_encode in python. Bets explained with some code:

>>> from urllib import urlencode
>>> params = {'p' : '1 2 3 4 5&6', 'l' : 'ab|cd|ef'}
>>> urlencode(params)
'p=1+2+3+4+5%266&l=ab%7Ccd%7Cef'

I want to keep the pipes ('|') in to l parameter. can you please tell me how?

The result should be

'p=1+2+3+4+5%266&l=ab|cd|ef'

PS: I do not want to put together the URL manually, but use urlencode for that.

Thanks -Pat

Answer 1

Convert a mapping object or a sequence of two-element tuples to a “percent-encoded” string[...]

The urlencode() method is acting as expected. If you want to prevent the encoding then you can first encode the entire object and then replace the encoded characters with pipes.

>>> u = urlencode(params)
>>> u.replace('%7C', '|')
'p=1+2+3+4+5%266&l=ab|cd|ef'