How to encode the plus (+) symbol in a URL

The URL link below will open a new Google mail window. The problem I have is that Google replaces all the plus (+) signs in the email body with blank space. It looks like it only happens with the `+` sign. How can I remedy this? (I am working on a ASP.NET web page.)

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subject&body=Hi there+Hello there

(In the body email, "Hi there+Hello there" will show up as "Hi there Hello there")

<p>It's safer to always percent-encode all characters except those defined as "unreserved" in RFC-3986.</p>

unreserved = ALPHA / DIGIT / "-" / "." / "_" / "~"

<p>So, percent-encode the plus character and other special characters.</p>

<p>The problem that you are having with pluses is because, according to RFC-1866 (HTML 2.0 specification), paragraph 8.2.1. subparagraph 1., "The form field names and values are escaped: space characters are replaced by `+', and then reserved characters are escaped"). This way of encoding form data is also given in later HTML specifications, look for relevant paragraphs about application/x-www-form-urlencoded.</p>

Just to add this to the list:

```
Uri.EscapeUriString("Hi there+Hello there") // Hi%20there+Hello%20there
Uri.EscapeDataString("Hi there+Hello there") // Hi%20there%2BHello%20there
```

See

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Usually you want to use `EscapeDataString` which does it right.

If you want a plus `+` symbol in the body you have to encode it as `2B`.

For example:
[Try this][1]

[1]:

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Generally if you use .NET API's - `new Uri("someproto:with+plus").LocalPath` or `AbsolutePath` will keep plus character in URL. (Same `"someproto:with+plus"` string)


but `Uri.EscapeDataString("with+plus")` will escape plus character and will produce `"with%2Bplus"`.

Just to be consistent I would recommend to always escape plus character to `"%2B"` and use it everywhere - then no need to guess who thinks and what about your plus character.

I'm not sure why from escaped character `'+'` decoding would produce space character `' '` - but apparently it's the issue with some of components.

In order to encode a `+` value using JavaScript, you can use the `encodeURIComponent` function.

Example:

<!-- begin snippet: js hide: false console: true babel: false -->

<!-- language: lang-js -->

var url = "+11";
var encoded_url = encodeURIComponent(url);
console.log(encoded_url)

<!-- end snippet -->

The `+` character has a special meaning in [the query segment of] a URL => it means whitespace: ` `. If you want to use the literal `+` sign there, you need to URL encode it to `%2b`:

```lang-none
body=Hi+there%2bHello+there
```

Here's an example of how you could properly generate URLs in .NET:

var uriBuilder = new UriBuilder("https://mail.google.com/mail");

var values = HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(string.Empty);
values["view"] = "cm";
values["tf"] = "0";
values["to"] = "[email protected]";
values["su"] = "some subject";
values["body"] = "Hi there+Hello there";

uriBuilder.Query = values.ToString();

Console.WriteLine(uriBuilder.ToString());

The result:

>

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