public static String encodeURIComponent(String s) { String result = null; try { result = URLEncoder.encode(s, "UTF-8") .replaceAll("\\+", "%20") .replaceAll("\\%21", "!") .replaceAll("\\%27", "'") .replaceAll("\\%28", "(") .replaceAll("\\%29", ")") .replaceAll("\\%7E", "~"); } // This exception should never occur. catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) { result = s; }