So you want to store URLs in MySQL, and the URLs have those
annoying %20%27%7C%26%5E%2B%2D%25 symbols? And you
want to be able to show your users some kind of human-readable
information. You might want to consider using this trick. Take
this list of commonly escaped characters as an example:
%20 - space %27 - ' %7C - | %26 - & %5E - ^ %2B - + %2D - - %25 - %
So, how about we do some search’n’replace on that?
mysql> SET @url:='%20%27%7C%26%5E%2B%2D%25';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> SELECT @url as original,
-> REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(
-> REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(
-> @test,'%20',' '),
-> '%27','\''),
-> '%7C','|'), -- REPLACE() is case sensitive
-> '%7c','|'), -- so we have
-> '%26','&'),
-> '%5E','^'),
-> '%5e','^'), -- to …[Read more]