URL Encode all non alpha numeric in C#

Question

I need to fully URL Encode an email address.

HttpUtility.UrlEncode seems to ignore certain characters such as ! and .

I need to pass an email address in a url formated like this:

/Users/[email protected]/Comments

Because my WebMethod uri template looks like this:

[WebGet(UriTemplate = "Users/{emailAddress}/Comments")]

The period breaks WCF and will not pass the email address to my REST webservice method. Removing the period passes the value just fine. I'm hoping there is a method which will encode all non alpha numeric characters since everything consuming this service will need to do this.

EDIT

I had considered using:

Convert.ToBase64String(Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes("[email protected]"))

Do most other languages have easy ways to convert a string to base64? My main concern is that our customers who consume this service will need to encode the email address using Java, PHP, Ruby, etc.

Answer 1

Here's a potential Regex you could use to accomplish the encoding.

Regex.Replace(s, @"[^\w]", m => "%" + ((int)m.Value[0]).ToString("X2"));

I'm not sure that there is an existing framework method defined to strictly encode all non-alphanumeric characters that you could point your clients to.