Added a secondary link through code. Why is my href URL getting decoded?

Question

Added the following through code:

// $uri = custompath?type=All&field_id=2&storage=3 

$secondary_links['menu_custom_item'] = array(  
                      'attributes' => array( 'title' => $label ),
                      'alter'   => 1,
                      'href'    => $uri,
                      'title'   => $label,
                      'language'  => 'en' 
                );

Why is it that when drupal renders the link the URL it links to is something like: http://mydomain.ca/custompath%3Ftype%3DAll%2526field_id%3D2%2526storage%3D201110

Literally it links like that and obviously returns Page Not Found. As soon as I manually change the %'s in the path we're good again. Is there a way to prevent this? Do I need to deconstruct the URI and pass the variables in one by one?

Answer 1

Try using urlencode ...

$secondary_links['menu_custom_item'] = array(  
                      'attributes' => array( 'title' => $label ),
                      'alter'   => 1,
                      'href'    => urlencode($uri),
                      'title'   => $label,
                      'language'  => 'en' 
                );

Answer 2

Resolved. Had to do with how the url() function works in Drupal. Because I was passing the href in a way that Drupal considered it an 'internal' path - the query string was not being processed correctly. Resolved by turning href in my code to an absolute link so Drupal views it as external.