PHP WordPress URL Encoding Not Working with the_permalink Function

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1

I’m having trouble with URL encoding in WordPress. I need to encode permalinks but something weird is happening.

There’s this WordPress function called the_permalink() that gives you the URL for a post when you’re looping through posts. When I try to encode it with PHP’s urlencode() function, it doesn’t work as expected.

Here’s what I’m testing:

<?php
echo get_permalink();
$post_url = get_permalink();
echo $post_url;
echo urlencode(get_permalink());
echo urlencode($post_url);
$sample_url = 'http://mysite.local/blog/2023/12/15/sample-post/';
echo $sample_url;
echo urlencode($sample_url);
?>

The output I get is:

http://mysite.local/blog/2023/12/15/sample-post/
http://mysite.local/blog/2023/12/15/sample-post/
http://mysite.local/blog/2023/12/15/sample-post/
http://mysite.local/blog/2023/12/15/sample-post/
http%3A%2F%2Fmysite.local%2Fblog%2F2023%2F12%2F15%2Fsample-post%2F

Only the last line shows proper URL encoding. The other attempts with the permalink function don’t get encoded at all. What am I missing here?

2

yea, it’s kinda weird! the get_permalink() function gives you a usable url, so encoding might not be necessary. u could try rawurlencode() instead - it might help. also, ensure there ain’t buffering problems messing up ur output. good luck!

3

Hit this exact problem last year - spent hours pulling my hair out. The issue is get_permalink() returns URLs that WordPress has already processed with special encoding and character normalization. This conflicts with PHP’s standard encoding functions. Here’s what actually worked: grab the post ID with get_the_ID() first, then build the URL manually or use home_url() with the post slug. You can also try esc_url_raw(get_permalink()) before hitting it with urlencode() - strips out WordPress’s URL modifications that mess things up. Or just use wp_get_canonical_url() instead of get_permalink(). It gives cleaner URLs that don’t fight with standard PHP functions. Bottom line: get a clean URL first, then encode it. Don’t fight WordPress’s built-in processing.