(* i was looking for a quick and dirty way to encode some data to pass to a url via POST or GET with applescript and Internet Explorer, there were a few OSAXen which have that ability, but i didn't feel like installing anything, so i wrote this thing (works with standard ascii characters, characters above ascii 127 may run into character set issues see: applescript for converting macroman to windows-1252 encoding) *)
set theText to "I want to pass this text, via GET, to a url!"
set theText to text returned of (display dialog "encode what" default answer theText)
set theTextEnc to urlencode(theText) of me
display dialog theTextEnc default answer theTextEnc
on urlencode(theText)
set theTextEnc to ""
repeat with eachChar in characters of theText
set useChar to eachChar
set eachCharNum to ASCII number of eachChar
if eachCharNum = 32 then
set useChar to "+"
else if (eachCharNum ≠ 42) and (eachCharNum ≠ 95) and (eachCharNum < 45 or eachCharNum > 46) and (eachCharNum < 48 or eachCharNum > 57) and (eachCharNum < 65 or eachCharNum > 90) and (eachCharNum < 97 or eachCharNum > 122) then
set firstDig to round (eachCharNum / 16) rounding down
set secondDig to eachCharNum mod 16
if firstDig > 9 then
set aNum to firstDig + 55
set firstDig to ASCII character aNum
end if
if secondDig > 9 then
set aNum to secondDig + 55
set secondDig to ASCII character aNum
end if
set numHex to ("%" & (firstDig as string) & (secondDig as string)) as string
set useChar to numHex
end if
set theTextEnc to theTextEnc & useChar as string
end repeat
return theTextEnc
end urlencode
-- a reader contributed an applescript url decode routine
-- applescript page