You could easily replace the forward slashes `/` with something like an underscore `_` such as Wikipedia uses for spaces.  Replacing special characters with underscores, etc., is common practice.

You need to escape those but don&#39;t just replace it by `%2F` manually. You can use `URLEncoder` for this.

Eg `URLEncoder.encode(url, &quot;UTF-8&quot;)`

Then you can say 

    yourUrl = &quot;www.musicExplained/index.cfm/artist/&quot; + URLEncoder.encode(VariableName, &quot;UTF-8&quot;)

Check out this w3schools page about &quot;HTML URL Encoding Reference&quot;:
https://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_urlencode.asp

for / you would escape with %2F

Our team has just moved from Netbeans to IntelliJ 9 Ultimate and need to know what files/folders should typically be excluded from source control as they are not &quot;workstation portable&quot;, i.e.: they reference paths that only exist on one user&#39;s computer.

As far as I can tell, IntelliJ wants to ignore most of the .idea project including

    .idea/artifacts/*
    .idea/inspectionProfiles/*
    .idea/copyright/*
    .idea/dataSources.ids
    .idea/dataSources.xml
    .idea/workspace.xml

However, it seems to want to check in the `.iml` files that exist in each module&#39;s root directory.

I originally checked in the entire `.idea` directory via the command line which is obviously not aware of what &quot;should&quot; be ignored by IDEA.  Is the entire `.idea` directory typically ignored?



IntelliJ IDEA 9/10, what folders to check into (or not check into) source control?

What are the rules for **Ant path style patterns**.

The Ant site itself is surprisingly uninformative.

Ant path style patterns

I have set up my coldfusion application to have dynamic urls on the page, such as 

    www.musicExplained/index.cfm/artist/:VariableName

However my variable names will sometimes contain slashes, such as 

    www.musicExplained/index.cfm/artist/GZA/Genius

This is causing a problem, because my application presumes that the slash in the variable name represents a different section of the website, the artists albums. So the URL will fail.

I am wondering if there is anyway to prevent this from happening? Do I need to use a function that replaces slashes in the variable names with another character?

slashes in url variables

I have set up my coldfusion application to have dynamic urls on the page, such as
<pre><code class="hljs language-bash">www.musicExplained/index.cfm/artist/:VariableName
</code></pre>
However my variable names will sometimes contain slashes, such as
<pre><code class="hljs language-bash">www.musicExplained/index.cfm/artist/GZA/Genius
</code></pre>
This is causing a problem, because my application presumes that the slash in the variable name represents a different section of the website, the artists albums. So the URL will fail.
I am wondering if there is anyway to prevent this from happening? Do I need to use a function that replaces slashes in the variable names with another character?

I&#39;ve just noticed that the long, convoluted Facebook URLs that we&#39;re used to now look like this:

`http://www.facebook.com/example.profile#!/pages/Another-Page/123456789012345`

As far as I can recall, earlier this year it was just a normal URL-fragment-like string (starting with `#`), without the exclamation mark. But now it&#39;s a shebang or hashbang (`#!`), which I&#39;ve previously only seen in shell scripts and Perl scripts.

The [new Twitter](http://blog.twitter.com/2010/09/better-twitter.html) URLs now also feature the `#!` symbols. A Twitter profile URL, for example, now looks like this:

`http://twitter.com/#!/BoltClock`

Does `#!` now play some special role in URLs, like for a certain Ajax framework or something since the new Facebook and Twitter interfaces are now largely Ajaxified?   
Would using this in my URLs benefit my Web application in any way?

What&#39;s the shebang/hashbang (#!) in Facebook and new Twitter URLs for?

I&#39;m building an application to retrieve an image from internet. Even though it works fine, it is slow (on wrong given URL) when using try-catch statements in the application. 

(1) Is this the best way to verify URL and handle wrong input - or should I use Regex (or some other method) instead?

(2) Why does the application try to find images locally if I don&#39;t specify http:// in the textBox?

    private void btnGetImage_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        String url = tbxImageURL.Text;
        byte[] imageData = new byte[1];

        using (WebClient client = new WebClient())
        {
            try
            {
                imageData = client.DownloadData(url);
                using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(imageData))
                {
                    try
                    {
                        Image image = Image.FromStream(ms);
                        pbxUrlImage.Image = image;
                    }
                    catch (ArgumentException)
                    {
                        MessageBox.Show(&quot;Specified image URL had no match&quot;, 
                            &quot;Image Not Found&quot;, MessageBoxButtons.OK, 
                            MessageBoxIcon.Error);
                    }
                }
            }
            catch (ArgumentException)
            {
                MessageBox.Show(&quot;Image URL can not be an empty string&quot;, 
                    &quot;Empty Field&quot;, MessageBoxButtons.OK, 
                    MessageBoxIcon.Information);
            }
            catch (WebException)
            {
                MessageBox.Show(&quot;Image URL is invalid.\nStart with http:// &quot; +
                    &quot;and end with\na proper image extension&quot;, &quot;Not a valid URL&quot;,
                    MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Information);
            }
        } // end of outer using statement
    } // end of btnGetImage_Click

**EDIT:**
I tried the suggested solution by Panagiotis Kanavos (thank you for your effort!), but it only gets caught in the if-else statement if the user enters `http://` and nothing more. Changing to UriKind.Absolute catches empty strings as well! Getting closer :)
The code as of now:

    private void btnGetImage_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        String url = tbxImageURL.Text;
        byte[] imageData = new byte[1];
        Uri myUri;

        // changed to UriKind.Absolute to catch empty string
        if (Uri.TryCreate(url, UriKind.Absolute, out myUri))
        {
            using (WebClient client = new WebClient())
            {
                try
                {
                    imageData = client.DownloadData(myUri);
                    using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(imageData))
                    {
                        imageData = client.DownloadData(myUri);
                        Image image = Image.FromStream(ms);
                        pbxUrlImage.Image = image;
                    }
                }
                catch (ArgumentException)
                {
                    MessageBox.Show(&quot;Specified image URL had no match&quot;,
                        &quot;Image Not Found&quot;, MessageBoxButtons.OK, 
                        MessageBoxIcon.Error);
                }
                catch (WebException)
                {
                    MessageBox.Show(&quot;Image URL is invalid.\nStart with http:// &quot; +
                        &quot;and end with\na proper image extension&quot;, 
                        &quot;Not a valid URL&quot;,
                        MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Information);
                }
            }
        }
        else
        {
            MessageBox.Show(&quot;The Image Uri is invalid.\nStart with http:// &quot; +
                &quot;and end with\na proper image extension&quot;, &quot;Uri was not created&quot;,
                MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Information);
        }

I must be doing something wrong here. :(

A better way to validate URL in C# than try-catch?

How do you encode a [URL][1] in Android?

I thought it was like this:

    final String encodedURL = URLEncoder.encode(urlAsString, &quot;UTF-8&quot;);
    URL url = new URL(encodedURL);

If I do the above, the `http://` in `urlAsString` is replaced by `http%3A%2F%2F` in `encodedURL` and then I get a  `java.net.MalformedURLException` when I use the URL.

  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_resource_locator


URL encoding in Android

I want to get the `v=id` from YouTube’s URL with JavaScript (no jQuery, pure JavaScript).

## Example YouTube URL formats

`http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8nQa1cJyX8&amp;a=GxdCwVVULXctT2lYDEPllDR0LRTutYfW`

`http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8nQa1cJyX8`

*Or any other YouTube format that contains a video ID in the URL.*

## Result from these formats

`u8nQa1cJyX8`

How do I get the YouTube video ID from a URL?

Although it is strongly recommended ([W3C source][2], via [Wikipedia][3]) for web servers to support semicolon as a separator of URL query items (in addition to ampersand), it does not seem to be generally followed.

For example, compare

&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;[http://www.google.com/search?q=nemo&lt;b&gt;&amp;&lt;/b&gt;oe=utf-8][4]

&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;[http://www.google.com/search?q=nemo&lt;b&gt;;&lt;/b&gt;oe=utf-8][5]

results. (In the latter case, semicolon is, *or was at the time of writing this text*, treated as ordinary string character, as if the url was: [http://www.google.com/search?q=nemo&lt;b&gt;%3B&lt;/b&gt;oe=utf-8][6])


Although the first URL parsing library i tried, behaves well:

    &gt;&gt;&gt; from urlparse import urlparse, query_qs
    &gt;&gt;&gt; url = &#39;http://www.google.com/search?q=nemo;oe=utf-8&#39;
    &gt;&gt;&gt; parse_qs(urlparse(url).query)
    {&#39;q&#39;: [&#39;nemo&#39;], &#39;oe&#39;: [&#39;utf-8&#39;]}

What is the current status of accepting semicolon as a separator, and what are potential issues or some interesting notes? (from both server and client point of view)


  [1]: http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/1722/semicolonseparator.png
  [2]: http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/appendix/notes.html#h-B.2.2
  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Query_string#Structure
  [4]: http://www.google.com/search?q=nemo&amp;oe=utf-8
  [5]: http://www.google.com/search?q=nemo;oe=utf-8
  [6]: http://www.google.com/search?q=nemo%3Boe=utf-8

Semicolon as URL query separator

When creating JSON data manually, how should I escape string fields? Should I use something like Apache Commons Lang&#39;s `StringEscapeUtilities.escapeHtml`, `StringEscapeUtilities.escapeXml`, or should I use `java.net.URLEncoder`?

The problem is that when I use `SEU.escapeHtml`, it doesn&#39;t escape quotes and when I wrap the whole string in a pair of `&#39;`s, a malformed JSON will be generated.


How should I escape strings in JSON?

Say you have a String literal with a lot of quotation marks inside it. You could escape them all, but it&#39;s a pain, and difficult to read.

In some languages, you can just do this:

    foo = &#39;&quot;Hello, World&quot;&#39;;

In Java, however, `&#39;&#39;` is used for `char`s, so you can&#39;t use it for `String`s this way. Some languages have syntax to work around this. For example, in python, you can do this:

    &quot;&quot;&quot;A pretty &quot;convenient&quot; string&quot;&quot;&quot;

Does Java have anything similar?

In Java, is there a way to write a string literal without having to escape quotes?

I have a connection string in my web config:

    &lt;add name=&quot;MyConString&quot; connectionString=&quot;Server=dbsrv;User ID=myDbUser;Password=somepass&quot;word&quot; providerName=&quot;System.Data.SqlClient&quot; /&gt;

As you see, there is a quotation sign ( &quot; ) in the password (given from other dept. I can&#39;t change this db users password).

How do I have to escape the quote in this connection string?

Btw: I already tried &amp; quot; in the string. That didn&#39;t work - ado.net got an ArgumenException then: &quot;Format of the initialization string does not conform to specification starting at index 57.&quot;
57 is where the &amp; quot; is in my connection string.
I also tried enclosing the password part in &#39; - didn&#39;t work either.

Also tried &quot;&quot; and \&quot; - web.config can&#39;t be parsed then.

Thanks for the solution:

I had to combine the escaping of the double quote and putting the password in single quotes:

    &lt;add name=&quot;MyConString&quot; connectionString=&quot;Server=dbsrv;User ID=myDbUser;Password=&#39;somepass&amp;quot;word&#39;&quot; providerName=&quot;System.Data.SqlClient&quot; /&gt;

Escape quote in web.config connection string

I&#39;m trying to parse a file in C# that has field (string) arrays separated by ASCII character codes 0, 1 and 2 (in Visual Basic 6 you can generate these by using Chr(0) or Chr(1) etc.)

I know that for character code 0 in C# you can do the following:

    char separator = &#39;\0&#39;;

But this doesn&#39;t work for character codes 1 and 2?

How to get a char from an ASCII Character Code in C#

&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  
&gt; [Is there a RegExp.escape function in Javascript?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3561493/is-there-a-regexp-escape-function-in-javascript)  

&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;

I am trying to build a javascript regex based on user input:

&lt;pre&gt;
function FindString(input) {
    var reg = new RegExp(&#39;&lt;div&gt;&#39; + input + &#39;&lt;/div&gt;&#39;);
    // [snip] perform search
}
&lt;/pre&gt;

But the regex will not work correctly when the user input contains a `?` or `*` because they are interpreted as regex specials. In fact, if the user puts an unbalanced `(` or `[` in their string, the regex isn&#39;t even valid.

What is the javascript function to correctly escape all special characters for use in regex?

Content Type	Original Author	Original Content on Stackoverflow
Question	namtax	View Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - Url	SLaks	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - Url	Caleb Hearth	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - Url	Aniket Thakur	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - Url	Inquisitus	View Answer on Stackoverflow

slashes in url variables

Url Problem Overview

Url Solutions

Solution 1 - Url

Solution 2 - Url

Solution 3 - Url

Solution 4 - Url

Ant path style patterns

IntelliJ IDEA 9/10, what folders to check into (or not check into) source control?

Attributions