Normalize a String to create a safe URL in Java

Question

I'm writing a library in Java which creates the URL from a list of filenames in this way:

final String domain = "http://www.example.com/";

String filenames[] = {"Normal text","Ich weiß nicht", "L'ho inserito tra i princìpi"};

System.out.println(domain+normalize(filenames[0]);
//Prints  "http://www.example.com/Normal_text"
System.out.println(domain+normalize(filenames[1]);
//Prints  "http://www.example.com/Ich_weib_nicht"
System.out.println(domain+normalize(filenames[2]);
//Prints  "http://www.example.com/L_ho_inserito_tra_i_principi"

Exists somewhere a Java library that exposes the method normalize that I'm using in the code above?

Literature:

Take a look at this: stackoverflow.com/questions/21489289/… — StoopidDonut
– StoopidDonut, Commented Feb 10, 2014 at 13:32
@PopoFibo Yes, it works! I never seen the Normalizer class in Java! Thanks a lot! Can you post an answer with a short example? — mat_boy
– mat_boy, Commented Feb 10, 2014 at 13:37

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:02:08Z

7

Taking the content from my previous answer here, you can use java.text.Normalizer which comes close to normalizing Strings in Java. An example of normalization would be;

Accent removal:

String accented = "árvíztűrő tükörfúrógép";
String normalized = Normalizer.normalize(accented,  Normalizer.Form.NFD);
normalized = normalized.replaceAll("[^\\p{ASCII}]", "");

System.out.println(normalized);

Gives;

arvizturo tukorfurogep

edited May 23, 2017 at 12:02

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answered Feb 10, 2014 at 13:40

StoopidDonut

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Comments

mikea · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-10 13:38:06Z

3

Assuming you mean you want to encode the strings to make them safe for the url. In which case use URLEncoder:

final String domain = "http://www.example.com/";

String filenames[] = {"Normal text","Ich weiß nicht", "L'ho inserito tra i princìpi"};

System.out.println(domain + URLEncoder.encode(filenames[0], "UTF-8"));
System.out.println(domain + URLEncoder.encode(filenames[1], "UTF-8"));
System.out.println(domain + URLEncoder.encode(filenames[2], "UTF-8"));

answered Feb 10, 2014 at 13:38

mikea

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5 Comments

mat_boy Over a year ago

No, because I can't use "special" chars like % and so on which comes from the URLEncoder.encode() method. I'm creating URLs which must be result valid byr a special XML validator. It requires no whitespaces, no special chars, and so on

mikea Over a year ago

So they aren't URLs then

mat_boy Over a year ago

No no, they are! The XML contains a list of elements, each element has an rdf:about property which has an URL as value

mikea Over a year ago

In which case I would use StringEscapeUtils.escapeXML() from the apache commons lang library but I don't see what that has to do with URLs

mat_boy Over a year ago

That method is not ok for the validator. E.g., StringEscapeUtils.escapeXml("l'avevo all'università") is escaped as l'avevo all'università: the accented "a" is still there! Moreover, the text is not human-readable.

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