Usage of Encode Uri in Power Automate

[codevenkat]

Introduction:

In Power Automate, to return a uniform resource identifier (URI) encoded version for a string by replacing URL-unsafe characters with escape characters we can use either encodeUriComponent or uriComponent functions in expressions.

Step 1:

Login to the required Power Apps environment using URL make.powerapps.com by providing user name and password and click on Flows on the left hand side as shown in the below figure.

Step 2:

After Step 1, click on New Flow and then Instant Flow and under option Choose how to trigger the flow select Manually tigger a flow and click on Create button as shown in the below figure.

Step 3:

After Step 2, provide name as Encode Uri for the flow and then select an operation with name Initialize variable Action  as shown in the below figure.

Step 4:

After Step 3, Initialize variable is used to hold url that needs to be encoded, so provide the name as Uri and Type as String and Value as https://venkatasubbaraopolisetty.com/ and click on New Step as shown in the below figure.

Step 5:

After Step 4, select an Action Compose under Choose an operation as shown in the below figure.

Step 6:

After Step 5, under Inputs  click on Expression and type  

encodeUriComponent(variables('Uri'))

here encodeUriComponent() is the function and variables (‘Uri’) is the variable value which we received from step 4 as shown in the below figure.

Step 7:

After Step 6, Click on Save button and click on Test as shown in the below figure.

Step 8:

After Step 7, Click on Manually and Click on Test  as shown in the below figure.

Step 9:

After Step 8, Click on Run Flow  and you could see below screen and click on Done as shown in the below figure.

Step 10:

After Step 9, input initialize variable with Uri turned to encoded uri which is encoded version for a string by replacing URL-unsafe characters with escape characters as shown in the below figure.

Step 11:

After Step 10, we can also use another recommended function uriComponent by Microsoft by providing under compose operation under expression to encode

uriComponent(variables('Uri'))

which will encode to equivalent encoded version for a string by replacing URL-unsafe characters with escape characters and save and Test (Repeat Steps 8 and 9)and can see same expected result as shown in the below figure.

Step 12:

After Step 11, one can find both Power Automate functions provided same result as shown in the below figure.

Note:

1. Make sure to save and run the flow whenever you try expressions.
2. MS documentation is found at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/logic-apps/workflow-definition-language-functions-reference#u...
3. As an example my website is taken into consideration to provide as variable in Step 4, you can provide any other value of your choice.

Conclusion:  In this way one can easily generate encoded version for a string by replacing URL-unsafe characters with escape characters.

[Anonymous]

Hi,
can you explain why characters like - and _ are not encoded correctly while = is encoded. 
I try to encode a ConversationID from an outlook action in power automate. 

[codevenkat]

Hi @Anonymous :

-_.!~*'(). If you want to these characters are encoded, you have to replace them with corresponding UTF-8 sequence of characters

An ideal c# code looks like below

const encode = str => encodeURIComponent(str)
.replace(/\\-/g, '%2D')
.replace(/\\_/g, '%5F')
.replace(/\\./g, '%2E')
.replace(/\\!/g, '%21')
.replace(/\\~/g, '%7E')
.replace(/\\*/g, '%2A')
.replace(/\\'/g, '%27')
.replace(/\\(/g, '%28')
.replace(/\\)/g, '%29');

So , you have to try like this expressions in your power automate flow and do testing it

[Anonymous]

Hi @codevenkat 

thanks for your tip. In the meantime I've already figured out that I need to set replace rules for this to archive. 

This works also fine, the characters are encoded.

Unfortunately Edge automatically decodes these characters again when using the created string as an URL so my initial plan to generate a OWA deeplink to a mail does not work. 

I assume MS is using - and _ in their Mail conversation IDs on purpose to prevent exactly what I try to do.

[Anonymous]

Cheers for this - it was really useful!  I guess some special characters are handled more equally than others!  Our Dev and Stage testing didn't flag any issues but once in Production we hit a few odd issues with names.

[codevenkat]

@Anonymous  : Good to know that

[Anonymous]

Actually in the end we went with FetchXML instead of ODATA and then only replaced ampersands if present.  This seemed like the most resilient and least fiddly way forward.