Do these 3 things before closing this tab:
1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteUse urllib.parse.urlencode to turn query data into an ampersand-separated, percent-encoded string. Set doseq=True when a value is a sequence that should produce repeated keys, and choose quote_via to control how spaces and slashes are encoded.
Build a query string with urlencode
urlencode accepts either a mapping or a sequence of two-item tuples, where each tuple contains a key and its value. It returns percent-encoded ASCII text with pairs separated by &. For example:
from urllib.parse import urlencode
params = {"q": "python urls", "page": 2}
print(urlencode(params))
# q=python+urls&page=2The default encoding uses form-style quoting: spaces become +, and a slash in a key or value is encoded as %2F. Both keys and values are passed through the selected quoting function.
Use doseq=True to repeat a key for sequence values
With the default doseq=False, a sequence supplied as a value is treated as one value rather than expanded into multiple query pairs. Set doseq=True when you want a separate pair for each element:
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from urllib.parse import urlencode
params = [("tag", ["python", "urls"]), ("page", 2)]
print(urlencode(params, doseq=True))
# tag=python&tag=urls&page=2When the input is a sequence of tuples, the resulting pairs follow the tuple order. This makes tuple input useful when repeated keys or a specific parameter order matter.
Choose between quote_plus and quote
The quote_via argument selects the function that quotes keys and values. Its default is quote_plus. Pass urllib.parse.quote if you want spaces represented as %20 and slashes left unescaped by default:
from urllib.parse import quote, urlencode
params = {"path": "docs/python urls"}
print(urlencode(params))
# path=docs%2Fpython+urls
print(urlencode(params, quote_via=quote))
# path=docs/python%20urls| Option | Space | Slash (/) |
Typical choice |
|---|---|---|---|
Default quote_plus |
+ |
%2F |
Use when form-style plus-for-space encoding is wanted. |
quote |
%20 |
Unescaped by default | Use when percent-encoded spaces are wanted and slashes should remain unescaped. |
The safe argument can further specify characters to leave unquoted. The safe, encoding, and errors arguments are passed to the quoting function; encoding and errors apply only to string query elements.
Parse the result back into Python data
Use urllib.parse.parse_qs or urllib.parse.parse_qsl to parse a query string. They are the documented counterparts for turning encoded query data back into Python structures. Choose the parser that fits the shape your code needs.
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Python version notes
According to the Python library reference, urlencode has accepted bytes and string query values since Python 3.2, and quote_via was added in Python 3.5. The current documentation marks acceptance of certain false-valued objects as deprecated in Python 3.14, with exceptions including empty strings, byte-like objects, and None. Check the documentation for the specific Python release you support when relying on compatibility details.
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