This is not a full reference guide. It’s just a quick reminder for URL encoding.

I am studying OAuth and I am reviewing the signature base string for a signed request.

The base string has:

  • Method of request: POST
  • URL: https://api.twitter.com/statuses/update.json
  • Parameters joined by &

Parameters

  • include_entities = true
  • oauth_consumer_key = weirdnumberhere
  • oauth_signature_method = HMAC-SHA1
  • oauth_token = otherweirdnumber
  • oauth_version = 1.0
  • status = The Chemical Brothers

Base string

POST&https%3A%2F%2Fapi.twitter.com%%2Fstatuses%2F
update.json&include_entities%3Dtrue%26
oauth_consumer_key%3Dweirdnumberhere%26
oauth_signature_method%3DHMAC-SHA1%26oauth_token%3D
otherweirdnumber%26oauth_version%3D1.0%26
status%3DThe%20Chemical%20Brothers

Hex codes

  • %3A
  • %2F
  • %3D
  • %26
  • %20

Converting character to hex in Python

The first part of the string is:

https://

You can get the character encoding to hex using hex(ord()).

>>> hex(ord(':'))
'0x3a'
>>> hex(ord('/'))
'0x2f'

This is the conversion:

https%3A%2F%2F

These are the conversions:

>>> hex(ord('='))
'0x3d'
>>> hex(ord('&'))
'0x26'
>>> hex(ord(' '))
'0x20'