passing multiple urls within url query params

Question

I have to handle a case where multiple urls should be passed in the url query params, for example:

http://example.com/?landing=<url1>&referrer=<url2>

url1: http://test1.com/test.html?param=x&param2=y
url2: http://test2.com/test/test.html?p=x&c=&...

At the moment I'm trying the following without success:

var l = encodeURIComponent(document.URL);
var r = encodeURIComponent(document.referrer);
window.location.href = 'http://example.net/?landing=' + l + '&ref=' + r;

My question is: What would be the best way to encode url1 and url2? Should I use encodeURIComponent or would it be better to use base64 encoding for those params or perhaps something else?

Answer 1

You're fine with URL-encoding the whole parameters, but if you're encoding full URLs you should use encodeURI instead of encodeURIComponent .

A possible issue here is that the first and/or second URL passed as query string parameters may reach the maximum characters allowed in an URL , but as long as you can predict that this will never happen, you're still fine again!

About the base64 approach, you could reach the so-called maximum characters allowed in an URL limitation easily.