How do I URl encode something in Node.js?

You can use JavaScript's encodeURIComponent:

encodeURIComponent('select * from table where i()')

giving

'select%20*%20from%20table%20where%20i()'

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The built-in module querystring is what you're looking for:

var querystring = require("querystring");
var result = querystring.stringify({query: "SELECT name FROM user WHERE uid = me()"});
console.log(result);
#prints 'query=SELECT%20name%20FROM%20user%20WHERE%20uid%20%3D%20me()'

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Use the escape function of querystring. It generates a URL safe string.

var escaped_str = require('querystring').escape('Photo on 30-11-12 at 8.09 AM #2.jpg');
console.log(escaped_str);
// prints 'Photo%20on%2030-11-12%20at%208.09%20AM%20%232.jpg'

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Note that URI encoding is good for the query part, it's not good for the domain. The domain gets encoded using punycode. You need a library like URI.js to convert between a URI and IRI (Internationalized Resource Identifier).

This is correct if you plan on using the string later as a query string:

> encodeURIComponent("http://examplé.org/rosé?rosé=rosé")
'http%3A%2F%2Fexampl%C3%A9.org%2Fros%C3%A9%3Fros%C3%A9%3Dros%C3%A9'

If you don't want ASCII characters like /, : and ? to be escaped, use encodeURI instead:

> encodeURI("http://examplé.org/rosé?rosé=rosé")
'http://exampl%C3%A9.org/ros%C3%A9?ros%C3%A9=ros%C3%A9'

However, for other use-cases, you might need uri-js instead:

> var URI = require("uri-js");
undefined
> URI.serialize(URI.parse("http://examplé.org/rosé?rosé=rosé"))
'http://xn--exampl-gva.org/ros%C3%A9?ros%C3%A9=ros%C3%A9'

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encodeURIComponent(string) will do it:

encodeURIComponent("Robert'); DROP TABLE Students;--")
//>> "Robert')%3B%20DROP%20TABLE%20Students%3B--"

Passing SQL around in a query string might not be a good plan though,

see this one

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encodeURI

The encodeURI() method is used to encode a complete URL. This method encodes special characters except ~!$&@#*()=:/,;?+

encodeURIComponent

To encode special characters in URI components, you should use the encodeURIComponent() method. This method is suitable for encoding URL components such as query string parameters and not the complete URL.

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