Programming Odds and Ends

I came across a simple but interesting solution when working on a project that required sending query string that contains another query string (i.e. a URL Inception  :) ... ) First Pass: http://somedomain.com/someservice?query=http://anotherdomain.com/anotherservice?dream1=value1 Which works fine as long as you are sending a single query string. However, if you have additional query string your data breaks at the first ampersand of the second query string. i.e. http://somedomain.com/someservice?dream1=value1&dream2=http://anotherdomain.com/anotherservice?&subdream1=subdreamvalue1 will be interpreted as: after the URL is translated in a browser. The Solution: Using good old URL encoding . Changing the ampersand in the second query string to %26  fixes the issue. i.e. http://somedomain.com/someservice?dream1=value1&dream2=http://anotherdomain.com/anotherservice? %26 subdream1=subdreamvalue1 Will have all query strings in their respective URL.