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URLDecode

Last update:
May 18, 2026

Description

Decodes a URL-encoded string.

Returns

A copy of a string, decoded.

Category

Function syntax

URLDecode(urlEncodedString[, charset])

See also

URLEncodedFormatTags and functions for globalizing applications in the Developing ColdFusion Applications

History

ColdFusion MX 6.1: Changed the default charset: the default charset is the character encoding of the URL scope.
ColdFusion MX:
  • Changed Unicode support: ColdFusion supports the Java UCS-2 representation of Unicode character values 0-65535. (Earlier releases supported ASCII values.)
  • Added the charset parameter.

Parameters

Parameter
Description
urlEncodedString
URL-encoded string or a variable that contains one.
charset
The character encoding in which the URL is encoded. Optional.The following list includes commonly used values:
  • utf-8
  • iso-8859-1
  • windows-1252
  • us-ascii
  • shift_jis
  • iso-2022-jp
  • euc-jp
  • euc-kr
  • big5
  • euc-cn
  • utf-16 For more information on character encoding, see: www.w3.org/International/O-charset.en.html.The default value is the character encoding of the URL scope.

Usage

URL encoding formats some characters with a percent sign and the two-character hexadecimal representation of the character. For example, a character whose code is 129 is encoded as %81. A space is encoded with a plus sign. Query strings in HTTP are always URL-encoded.

Example

<cfscript>
       bookName ="Hound of Baskervilles";
       myURL='http://site.com?book=#EncodeForURL(bookName)#';
       WriteOutput(myURL); // http://site.com?book=Hound+of+Baskervilles
       writeOutput(urlDecode(myURL)) // http://site.com?book=Hound of Baskervilles
</cfscript>

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