Help with Open URL

[SCalkins]

I'm trying to setup an alfred workflow to open a URL with a search query.

 

Example: 

 

1) I want to search for someone named 'John Doe'

with the following domain:

 

http://www.whitepages.com/name/John-Doe

 

How do I Encode Spaces as '-' Dashes? 

 

2) Same Scenario, but encode spaces as '/' OR '%2F'

 

http://radaris.com/p/John%2FDoe/

http://radaris.com/p/John/Doe/

 

[deanishe]

That depends on which programming language you're using.

In Python, it'd be one of: 

query = query.replace(' ', '-')
query = query.replace(' ', '/')
query = query.replace(' ', '%2F')

[jdfwarrior]

I'm trying to setup an alfred workflow to open a URL with a search query.

 

Example: 

 

1) I want to search for someone named 'John Doe'

with the following domain:

 

http://www.whitepages.com/name/John-Doe

 

How do I Encode Spaces as '-' Dashes? 

 

2) Same Scenario, but encode spaces as '/' OR '%2F'

 

http://radaris.com/p/John%2FDoe/

http://radaris.com/p/John/Doe/

 

As deanishe said, it all depends on the language that you are using. Some languages you would have to set up a manual list of character replacements. PHP has a urlencode() function that will handle a lot of the encoding for you.

[deanishe]

Many languages have a urlencode() function, but that will only get you the / -> %2F in your examples.

Spaces will either be encoded to %20 or +, depending on options.

[SCalkins]

That depends on which programming language you're using.

In Python, it'd be one of: 

query = query.replace(' ', '-')
query = query.replace(' ', '/')
query = query.replace(' ', '%2F')

I'm not using any language at the moment, I have yet to develop any workflow. I was attempting to do it with the custom web search.

 

As far as developing a workflow is there any sample/example workflows that I can look at that might be similar to what I'm trying to accomplish?

[deanishe]

If you want to do it with a custom web search, you should include site:whitepages.com in the query part of the URL (for Google). Or inurl:whitepages.com/name/.

For example, your custom search URL for whitepages.com might be: 

https://www.google.com/search?q=site:whitepages.com+{query}