How in ASP.NET MVC to change Url.Encode character replacement strategy? - asp.net-mvc

Question

I'm using Url.Encode within a view and it's replacing spaces with + so instead of:
/production/cats-the-musical I'm getting .../cats+the+musical.
I'm sure this is an easy one, but where do you go to configuring which characters are used for this?
I'll be doing this:
public static string EncodeForSEO(this UrlHelper helper, string unencodedUrl)
{
return helper.Encode(unencodedUrl.Replace(' ', '-'));
}
Until I get a better answer from you guys.
Edit: Thanks Guffa for pointing out my hasty coding.

Answer 1

I want to draw attention to Path versus Query String encoding differences
MVC allows / encourages us to write paths (routes) that can be easier to remember than query strings. e.g. /Products.aspx?id=1 could, in MVC, be /Products/View/1
Building on that, it also encourages, for SEO friendliness, other data that may or may not be necessary like /Products/View/1/Coffee
If the name has space characters, or a necessary parameter is a string containing space characters, and you are including it in the Url path, one of 2 things must happen because a ' ' cannot be left in a Url Path or Query string parameter without being encoded.
You must UrlPathEncode() the string
first you transform the spaces in the string,
then call UrlPathEncode() as you may have other characters requiring encoding.
Note: there is a big difference between Url Encoding (meant for query strings) and Url Path Encoding (meant for path portions of Urls)
cats the musical -> UrlEncode -> cats+the+musical
-- this is not valid in a url path
cats the musical -> UrlPathEncode -> cats%20the%20musical
If you're following along; going back to Web Forms vs MVC - /Products.aspx?name=Coffee+Beans would be rewritten as /Products/View/Coffee%20Beans
So that leaves us where OP's question starts. Q: How do you get SEO and human Friendly Urls? Q: Use #Guffas code to replace the " " with "-" in your own code before UrlPathEncoding the rest.
In sites I've worked on, when we have a user-entered value used only for SEO (like a blog title or similar) we go a step further normalizing the string output by collapsing successive spaces into a single "-" e.g.
cats the musical which would otherwise be cats-----the-----musical becomes cats-the-musical

Answer 2

You can't change which characters the UrlEncode method uses, the use of "+" for spaces is defined in the standards for how an URL is encoded, using "-" instead would mean that the method would change the value and not just encoding it. As the "-" character is not encoded, there would be no way to decode the string back to the original value.
In your method, there is no need to check for the character before doing the replacement. If the Replace method doesn't find anything to replace, it just returns the original string reference.
public static string EncodeForSEO(this UrlHelper helper, string unencodedUrl) {
return helper.Encode(unencodedUrl.Replace(' ', '-'));
}