How to pass slash / in an URL?

[DataSN.com]

On this page there are many abbreviation / acronym entries: http://abbreviations.wordcrow.com/acronyms/D/

They are generated in PHP:

<a href="/define/<?php echo rawurlencode($abbreviation['title'])?>/">
    <strong><?php echo $abbreviation['title']?></strong>
</a>

I used rawurlencode because many acronyms contain bizarre characters such as #, & and even /.

And the URL requests such as:

http://abbreviations.wordcrow.com/define/DA&E/

Would first be fed to rawurldecode():

$acronym = rawurldecode('DA%26E'); // $acronym would be 'DA&E'.

And then used in database queries.

While DA&E is all right, DA/C is not. Try this URL http://abbreviations.wordcrow.com/define/DA/C/ and you would end up with http://abbreviations.wordcrow.com/define/DA/C/ which is an error page.

I can extend more code to recognize /define/DA/C/ but it's just weird and non-sensible. I tried both Chrome and Firefox and they all automatically convert DA%2FC to DA/C. But with DA%26E, they don't.

What am I doing wrong? Ain't that / already encoded into '%2F'?? Really weird. Any help would be appreciated!

 

[ukbackorder]

Are you sure this is not due to your mod_rewrite which I assume you're using to create the URL? You usually have to 'escape' characters like that with a preceding \

Also it may be a server setup issue - see http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/core.html#allowencodedslashes

 

[DataSN.com]

Thanks, RobM. Here's the .htaccess in the /define/ directory:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . index.php [L]

</IfModule>

And in /define/index.php:

$req = explode('/', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);

$acronym = rawurldecode($req[2]);

... // Database queries with $acronym

I tried to add "AllowEncodedSlashes On" in the .htaccess but it didn't work. Any idea?

 

[ukbackorder]

I believe 'AllowEncodedSlashes On' has to actually be implemented at server level in the apache config file. So if this is not your server you'll have to ask the owning company to do it (they might refuse as some people believe it's not secure).