Form URL encoding

Form URL encoding (often known by its MIME type application/x-www-form-urlencoded) is a format mainly used for transferring form data (information typed into a form on a web page) from a web browser to a web server.

Form URL encoding uses a form of Percent-encoding in which a space character is allowed to be encoded as a " " character. It can constitute the body of an HTTP "POST" message, or the "query string" portion of a URL (see URL encoding).

Form URL encoding is inefficient when used for a large amount of binary data. The alternative is Multipart/Form-Data.

Links

 * HTML5: URL-encoded form data
 * HTML 4.01 Specification: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
 * POST (HTTP)
 * HTML Forms and Character Encoding Detection (blog post)