javascript escape vs urlencode of non-ascii strings [duplicate]

Question

• Context: HTML web page (jade/node.js/javascript)
• image url has strings with spaces/non-ascii characters
• I need to encode these strings either with escape or urlencode.
• as of now I am using escape to encode spaces specifically.

But I am not able justify/understand whether I should use escape to encode strings or should I use encodeurlcomponent. I tried reading some online blogs but not understood yet.

Any pointers to which one should be used under what circumstances.

Answer 1

• escape() will not encode: @*/+

• encodeURI() will not encode: ~!@#$&*()=:/,;?+'

• encodeURIComponent() will not encode: ~!*()'

For more information, have a look at these questions:

Encode URL in JavaScript?

When are you supposed to use escape instead of encodeURI / encodeURIComponent?