User Guide & URL Encoding Info

How to use this tool

• Encode: Enter plain text (supports English, Chinese, and special symbols) on the left, click the "Base64 Encode >>" button, and the corresponding Base64 string will be generated on the right.
• Decode: Enter a Base64 string on the left, click the "Base64 Decode >>" button, and the original text will be restored on the right.
• Example: Click the green "Example" button to quickly fill in test data.
• Drag to Adjust: You can click and drag the gray vertical bar in the middle to freely adjust the width of the input and result areas.

URL Encoding (UrlEncode) Basics

• Why is URL encoding needed? URLs can only be transmitted using the ASCII character set. If a URL contains Chinese, spaces, or special symbols (like ?, &, = as parameter values), it must be escaped and encoded; otherwise, it will cause parsing confusion for browsers or servers.
• Encoding Rules: URL encoding converts non-ASCII characters into a % followed by two hexadecimal digits. For example, a space is encoded as %20 (sometimes encoded as + in forms), and the Chinese character "你" is encoded as %E4%BD%A0 in UTF-8.
• Which characters are not encoded? Generally, letters (A-Z, a-z), numbers (0-9), and a few special characters (like -, _, ., !, ~, *, ', (, )) are safe in standard URI component encoding and do not need to be escaped.
• encodeURI vs encodeURIComponent:
  - encodeURI: Used to encode the entire URL. It does not encode characters with special meanings in URLs (like :, /, ?, &, =).
  - encodeURIComponent: Used to encode a specific parameter value in a URL. It encodes most special characters, ensuring that & or = contained in parameter values do not break the original URL structure. This tool generally uses this stricter encoding method underneath.