I'm trying to understand the structure of a URL, and I'm seeing a lot of %2C. I'm guessing this is a result of some encoding. What does that stand for?

up vote 459 down vote accepted

Checkout http://www.asciitable.com/

look into the Hx (Hex) column, 2C mapped to ,

any unusual encoding can be check by this way

+----+-----+----+-----+----+-----+----+-----+
| Hx | Chr | Hx | Chr | Hx | Chr | Hx | Chr |
+----+-----+----+-----+----+-----+----+-----+
| 00 | NUL | 20 | SPC | 40 |  @  | 60 |  `  |
| 01 | SOH | 21 |  !  | 41 |  A  | 61 |  a  |
| 02 | STX | 22 |  "  | 42 |  B  | 62 |  b  |
| 03 | ETX | 23 |  #  | 43 |  C  | 63 |  c  |
| 04 | EOT | 24 |  $  | 44 |  D  | 64 |  d  |
| 05 | ENQ | 25 |  %  | 45 |  E  | 65 |  e  |
| 06 | ACK | 26 |  &  | 46 |  F  | 66 |  f  |
| 07 | BEL | 27 |  '  | 47 |  G  | 67 |  g  |
| 08 | BS  | 28 |  (  | 48 |  H  | 68 |  h  |
| 09 | TAB | 29 |  )  | 49 |  I  | 69 |  i  |
| 0A | LF  | 2A |  *  | 4A |  J  | 6A |  j  |
| 0B | VT  | 2B |  +  | 4B |  K  | 6B |  k  |
| 0C | FF  | 2C |  ,  | 4C |  L  | 6C |  l  |
| 0D | CR  | 2D |  -  | 4D |  M  | 6D |  m  |
| 0E | SO  | 2E |  .  | 4E |  N  | 6E |  n  |
| 0F | SI  | 2F |  /  | 4F |  O  | 6F |  o  |
| 10 | DLE | 30 |  0  | 50 |  P  | 70 |  p  |
| 11 | DC1 | 31 |  1  | 51 |  Q  | 71 |  q  |
| 12 | DC2 | 32 |  2  | 52 |  R  | 72 |  r  |
| 13 | DC3 | 33 |  3  | 53 |  S  | 73 |  s  |
| 14 | DC4 | 34 |  4  | 54 |  T  | 74 |  t  |
| 15 | NAK | 35 |  5  | 55 |  U  | 75 |  u  |
| 16 | SYN | 36 |  6  | 56 |  V  | 76 |  v  |
| 17 | ETB | 37 |  7  | 57 |  W  | 77 |  w  |
| 18 | CAN | 38 |  8  | 58 |  X  | 78 |  x  |
| 19 | EM  | 39 |  9  | 59 |  Y  | 79 |  y  |
| 1A | SUB | 3A |  :  | 5A |  Z  | 7A |  z  |
| 1B | ESC | 3B |  ;  | 5B |  [  | 7B |  {  |
| 1C | FS  | 3C |  <  | 5C |  \  | 7C |  |  |
| 1D | GS  | 3D |  =  | 5D |  ]  | 7D |  }  |
| 1E | RS  | 3E |  >  | 5E |  ^  | 7E |  ~  |
| 1F | US  | 3F |  ?  | 5F |  _  | 7F | DEL |
+----+-----+----+-----+----+-----+----+-----+
  • 28
    If you write encodeURIComponent(",") in your JavaScript console, then you will also get %2C. And with decodeURIComponent("%2C") you will get back the ,. – Benny Neugebauer Jun 17 '15 at 9:26

It's the ASCII keycode in hexadecimal for a comma (,).

You should use your language's URL encoding methods when placing strings in URLs.

You can see a handy list of characters with man ascii. It has this compact diagram available for mapping hexadecimal codes to the character:

   2 3 4 5 6 7       
 -------------      
0:   0 @ P ` p     
1: ! 1 A Q a q     
2: " 2 B R b r     
3: # 3 C S c s     
4: $ 4 D T d t     
5: % 5 E U e u     
6: & 6 F V f v     
7: ' 7 G W g w     
8: ( 8 H X h x     
9: ) 9 I Y i y     
A: * : J Z j z
B: + ; K [ k {
C: , < L \ l |
D: - = M ] m }
E: . > N ^ n ~
F: / ? O _ o DEL

You can also quickly check a character's hexadecimal equivalent with:

$ echo -n , | xxd -p
2c

Another technique that you can use to get the symbol from url gibberish is to open Chrome console with F12 and just paste following javascript:

decodeURIComponent("%2c")

it will decode and return the symbol (or symbols).

enter image description here

Hope this saves you some time.

In Firefox there is Ctrl+Shift+K for the Web console, then you type

;decodeURIComponent("%2c")
  • mind the semicolon in the beginning
  • if you Copy&Paste, you should first enable it (the console will warn you)

and you get the answer:

","

It's the ASCII keycode in hexadecimal for a comma (,).

i.e. , = %2C

like in my link suppose i want to order by two fields means in my link it will come like

order_by=id%2Cname which is equal to order_by=id,name .

  • 2
    Your answer doesn't really add anything new that hasn't already been said in other, much older answers. – vijoc Feb 2 at 7:00

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