Drupal 7 url with hex code for special characters?

Question

The URLs for a Drupal 7 site are like the following ones:

• http://example.com/drupal7/?q=node/1#overlay=%3Fq%3Dnode%252Fadd%252Farticle
• http://example.com/drupal7/?q=node/1#overlay=%3Fq%3Dadmin%252Fconfig%252Fcontent%252Fformats

I am into module development and this is quite irritating. How do I display the special characters, the "slashes/", "#", "&" symbols that have been converted to hexadecimal codes?

Answer 1

You can use the following snippet.

$decoded_url = rawurldecode(rawurldecode($url));

For example, for the second URL, the code returns http://example.com/drupal7/?q=node/1#overlay=?q=admin/config/content/formats.

That URL anyway is not usable as it is, as it would be wrongly parsed. For example, if on my browser I enter http://tero.local/dr72/?q=node/1#overlay=?q=admin/config/content/formats (tero.local is the local name used from my computer), what I get is the following page.

As you see, the overlay is not shown.
Differently, when I enter http://tero.local/dr72/?q=node/1#overlay=%3Fq%3Dadmin%252Fconfig%252Fcontent%252Fformats, I get the following.

In this case, the overlay is rendered.

Answer 2

@kiamlaluno- thanks man ! seems like drupal 7 displays the url's with the corresponding hex codes for special symbols when the overlay feature is 'ON'.

For those who dont want to work with these url's the solution is to disable the overlay core module from- Configuration >> Core modules >> Overlay >> Save Configuration

This disables the Overlay and 'Normal' Urls with no hex code appear in the address bar.