(* 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