What is URL encoding and URL decoding?

URL encoding takes a string of input and makes it safe to appear in a URL.  For example you are probably familiar with %20 which means [space].  Another example is %2F which means '/'.  Unsafe characters are encoded into a 3 character sequence.  The first character is a percentage sign, followed by 2 hexidecimal digits, which is the actual value of the ASCII digit.

URL decoding simply looks for percentage signs, and converts the next 2 digits into the character the index refers to.

There is another almost exactly similar encoding form called x-www-form-urlencoded.  In this form of encoding spaces are represented as + instead of %20.  This form is used when submitting form data on web pages.
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URL Encoding   application/x-www-form-urlencoded Encoding

Enter a string of text to obtain the URL encoded representation:

Enter a URL encoded string to obtain the decoded form: