Why Encoding is Necessary
Characters like space, hash sign (#), ampersand (&), and question mark (?) have special meaning in a URL. Encoding converts them into a safe format (e.g., space becomes `%20`) so they can be transmitted as data without breaking the URL structure.
Encoding Functions
This tool uses the following JavaScript functions:
- **Encode:** Uses `encodeURIComponent()`. This is the standard for query string values as it encodes all reserved characters, including `=` and `&`.
- **Decode:** Uses `decodeURIComponent()`. This safely converts percent-encoded strings back to readable characters.