Ampersand not passed in url as encoded character - vba

Question

I am passing a url using a string from a cell in an excel workbook.
The string is : Ben & Jerry's 2017 Base PIC - 1.
The following is my code to pass the string in a url:
Dim targetUrl As String: targetUrl =
"https://catalina.my.salesforce.com/_ui/search/ui/UnifiedSearchResults?searchType=2&sen=aAh&str=" & i & "#!/initialViewMode=summary"
where 'i' is the string that is passed.
This is the url obtained in chrome :
https://catalina.my.salesforce.com/_ui/search/ui/UnifiedSearchResults?str=Ben+&+Jerry%27s+2017+Base+PIC+-+1+=&searchType=2&sen=aAh#!/fen=aAh&initialViewMode=detail&str=Ben
As you can see, the '&' isn't encoded and the search doesn't include any value after 'Ben'.
Could someone guide me on how to solve this issue? Thank you.

Answer 1

To encode the parameter:
Sub Test()
Dim url As String
url = "https://catalina.my.salesforce.com/_ui/search/ui/UnifiedSearchResults" _
& "?searchType=2" _
& "&sen=aAh" _
& "&str=" & EncodeURL("Ben & Jerry's 2017 Base PIC - 1") _
& "#!/initialViewMode=summary"
Debug.Print url
End Sub
Public Function EncodeURL(url As String) As String
Dim buffer As String, i As Long, c As Long, n As Long
buffer = String$(Len(url) * 12, "%")
For i = 1 To Len(url)
c = AscW(Mid$(url, i, 1)) And 65535
Select Case c
Case 48 To 57, 65 To 90, 97 To 122, 45, 46, 95 ' Unescaped 0-9A-Za-z-._ '
n = n + 1
Mid$(buffer, n) = ChrW(c)
Case Is <= 127 ' Escaped UTF-8 1 bytes U+0000 to U+007F '
n = n + 3
Mid$(buffer, n - 1) = Right$(Hex$(256 + c), 2)
Case Is <= 2047 ' Escaped UTF-8 2 bytes U+0080 to U+07FF '
n = n + 6
Mid$(buffer, n - 4) = Hex$(192 + (c \ 64))
Mid$(buffer, n - 1) = Hex$(128 + (c Mod 64))
Case 55296 To 57343 ' Escaped UTF-8 4 bytes U+010000 to U+10FFFF '
i = i + 1
c = 65536 + (c Mod 1024) * 1024 + (AscW(Mid$(url, i, 1)) And 1023)
n = n + 12
Mid$(buffer, n - 10) = Hex$(240 + (c \ 262144))
Mid$(buffer, n - 7) = Hex$(128 + ((c \ 4096) Mod 64))
Mid$(buffer, n - 4) = Hex$(128 + ((c \ 64) Mod 64))
Mid$(buffer, n - 1) = Hex$(128 + (c Mod 64))
Case Else ' Escaped UTF-8 3 bytes U+0800 to U+FFFF '
n = n + 9
Mid$(buffer, n - 7) = Hex$(224 + (c \ 4096))
Mid$(buffer, n - 4) = Hex$(128 + ((c \ 64) Mod 64))
Mid$(buffer, n - 1) = Hex$(128 + (c Mod 64))
End Select
Next
EncodeURL = Left$(buffer, n)
End Function