Special characters passed as parameters in URL - regex

Question

Requirement: Need way to handle Special characters like % and &. Need to tweak code below so that Special characters which come via $Control file are treated as it is.
For example: I have one of entry in $control file as 25% Dextrose(25ml). I need a way so that $ie.Navigate should simply navigate to https://www.xxxy.com/search/all?name=25% Dextrose(25ml). Currently it gets routed to https://www.xxxy.com/search/all?name=25%% Dextrose(25ml) (note a extra % in URL) and thus does not find that web-page.
**Few examples of special characters that need to be tackled:**
'/' - 32care Mouth/Throat
'%' - 3d1% Gel(30g)
'&' - Accustix Glucose & Protein
'/' - Ace Revelol(25/(2.5mg)
function getStringMatch
{
# Loop through all 2 digit combinations in the $path directory
foreach ($control In $controls)
{
$ie = New-Object -COMObject InternetExplorer.Application
$ie.visible = $true
$site = $ie.Navigate("https://www.xxxy.com/search/all?name=$control")
$ie.ReadyState
while ($ie.Busy -and $ie.ReadyState -ne 4){ sleep -Milliseconds 100 }
$link = $null
$link = $ie.Document.get_links() | where-object {$_.innerText -eq "$control"}
$link.click()
while ($ie.Busy -and $ie.ReadyState -ne 4){ sleep -Milliseconds 100 }
$ie2 = (New-Object -COM 'Shell.Application').Windows() | ? {
$_.Name -eq 'Windows Internet Explorer' -and $_.LocationName -match "^$control"
}
# NEED outerHTML of new page. CURRENTLY it is working for some.
$ie.Document.body.outerHTML > d:\med$control.txt
}
}
$controls = "Sporanox"
getStringMatch

Answer 1

You want to URL encode the URI. Add this at the very start:
Add-Type -AssemblyName 'System.Web'
And then encode the URL like this:
$controlUri = [System.Web.HttpUtility]::UrlEncode($control)
$site = $ie.Navigate("https://www.xxxy.com/search/all?name=$controlUri")

Answer 2

As Biffen pointed out, Web servers will treat special characters as codes. So in your case, $control needs to be modified so that the Web server understands where you want to go.
One way to fix it is the look for specific characters in the original product name you are looking for, and replace them with something that the server will understand:
Here is the entire code:
function getStringMatch
{
# Loop through all 2 digit combinations in the $path directory
foreach ($control In $controls)
{
$ie = New-Object -COMObject InternetExplorer.Application
$ie.visible = $true
$s = $control -replace '%','%25'
$s = $s -replace ' ','+'
$s = $s -replace '&','%26'
$s = $s -replace '/','%2F'
$site = $ie.Navigate("https://www.xxxy.com/search/all?name=$s")
while ($ie.Busy -and $ie.ReadyState -ne 4){ sleep -Milliseconds 100 }
$link = $null
$link = $ie.Document.get_links() | where-object {if ($_.innerText){$_.innerText.contains($control)}}
$link.click()
while ($ie.Busy){ sleep -Milliseconds 100 }
$ie.Document.body.outerHTML > d:\TEMP\med$control.txt
}
}
$controls = "Accustix Glucose & Protein"
getStringMatch
I tried with the following strings:
"3d1% Gel(30g)"
"Ace Revelol(25/2mg)"
"Accustix Glucose & Protein"
"32care Mouth/Throat"