Added in API level 1

URLDecoder

public class URLDecoder
extends Object

java.lang.Object
   ↳ java.net.URLDecoder


Utility class for HTML form decoding. This class contains static methods for decoding a String from the application/x-www-form-urlencoded MIME format.

The conversion process is the reverse of that used by the URLEncoder class. It is assumed that all characters in the encoded string are one of the following: "a" through "z", "A" through "Z", "0" through "9", and "-", "_", ".", and "*". The character "%" is allowed but is interpreted as the start of a special escaped sequence.

The following rules are applied in the conversion:

  • The alphanumeric characters "a" through "z", "A" through "Z" and "0" through "9" remain the same.
  • The special characters ".", "-", "*", and "_" remain the same.
  • The plus sign "+" is converted into a space character "   " .
  • A sequence of the form "%xy" will be treated as representing a byte where xy is the two-digit hexadecimal representation of the 8 bits. Then, all substrings that contain one or more of these byte sequences consecutively will be replaced by the character(s) whose encoding would result in those consecutive bytes. The encoding scheme used to decode these characters may be specified, or if unspecified, the default encoding of the platform will be used.

There are two possible ways in which this decoder could deal with illegal strings. It could either leave illegal characters alone or it could throw an IllegalArgumentException. Which approach the decoder takes is left to the implementation.

Summary

Public constructors

URLDecoder()

Public methods

static String decode(String s)

This method was deprecated in API level 15. The resulting string may vary depending on the platform's default encoding. Instead, use the decode(String,String) method to specify the encoding.

static String decode(String s, Charset charset)

Decodes an application/x-www-form-urlencoded string using a specific Charset.

static String decode(String s, String enc)

Decodes an application/x-www-form-urlencoded string using a specific encoding scheme.

Inherited methods

Public constructors

URLDecoder

Added in API level 1
public URLDecoder ()

Public methods

decode

Added in API level 1
Deprecated in API level 15
public static String decode (String s)

This method was deprecated in API level 15.
The resulting string may vary depending on the platform's default encoding. Instead, use the decode(String,String) method to specify the encoding.

Decodes a x-www-form-urlencoded string. The platform's default encoding is used to determine what characters are represented by any consecutive sequences of the form "%xy".

Parameters
s String: the String to decode

Returns
String the newly decoded String

decode

Added in API level 33
public static String decode (String s, 
                Charset charset)

Decodes an application/x-www-form-urlencoded string using a specific Charset. The supplied charset is used to determine what characters are represented by any consecutive sequences of the form "%xy".

Note: The World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation states that UTF-8 should be used. Not doing so may introduce incompatibilities.

Implementation Note:
Parameters
s String: the String to decode

charset Charset: the given charset

Returns
String the newly decoded String

Throws
NullPointerException if s or charset is null
IllegalArgumentException if the implementation encounters illegal characters

decode

Added in API level 1
public static String decode (String s, 
                String enc)

Decodes an application/x-www-form-urlencoded string using a specific encoding scheme.

This method behaves the same as decode(String s, Charset charset) except that it will look up the charset using the given encoding name.

Implementation Note:
Parameters
s String: the String to decode

enc String: The name of a supported character encoding.

Returns
String the newly decoded String

Throws
UnsupportedEncodingException If character encoding needs to be consulted, but named character encoding is not supported