How to Escape Percent (%) in Apache using .htaccess

Sometimes, you may need to escape special characters in URL for your website. Apache server allows you to easily escape characters using .htaccess file. Here are the steps to escape percent in Apache using .htaccess.

How to Escape Percent (%) in Apache using .htaccess

If you have percent sign in your URLs then it can stop redirects defined using RewriteRule in .htaccess. This is because percent sign has special meaning and role in rewrite rules and URL redirection. So mod_rewrite parses percent sign as a special character and causes your redirects to mess up. In such cases, proceed as follows.

1. Open .htaccess file

Open terminal and run the following command to open .htaccess file in a text editor.

$ sudo vi /var/www/html/.htaccess

2. Escape percent character

Add the following lines to .htacess file to escape percent character.

RewriteRule .* index.php/$0 [PT,B]

In the above code, the B flag ensures that percent sign remains escaped by mod_rewrite. Similarly, you can modify any other RewriteRule by adding B flag to it, to leave percent character untouched.