AJAX post, how to encode?

Hello everybody,

I guess my main question is; How do i encode HTML data from a textarea to prepare it for an AJAX call ( post method ).

I'm trying to insert some html code in a record in my database via a ajax http request. I'm using the POST method. The html that i'm trying to insert is in a textarea ( CKEDITOR: WYSIWYG ) and it seems to be working. But when i change some mark-up in the textarea, like making a word Strong. The AJAX functions returns a 403 Forbidden page.
I don't understand this because there are also <p></p> surrounding the data but that doesn't give an error. Only if i change to mark-up some more and add more HTML to the data then the AJAX call gives the 403 response page.

What is the best way to solve this problem. Must i encode all data before the AJAX call?.
This is my code.

Code:

---

var p = "hiddenSEOID="+document.editProductForm.hiddenSEOID.value;
        p += "&productSEOID="+document.editProductForm.productSEOID.value.toLowerCase();
        p += (document.editProductForm.prodAlive.checked) ? "&prodAlive=1" :"&prodAlive=0" ;
        p += "&prodName="+document.editProductForm.prodName.value;
        p += "&prodRange="+document.editProductForm.prodRange.value;
        p += "&prodDesc="+CKEDITOR.instances.prodDesc.getData();
        p += "&categories="+EL.compile("categoriesEL");
        p += "&prodKeywords="+EL.compile("keywordsEL");

        alert(p);
       
        var xhr = xmlHttpRequest();
        xhr.open("POST","php/updateProductBySEOID.php", true);       
        xhr.setRequestHeader("Content-type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
        xhr.setRequestHeader("Content-length", p.length);
        xhr.setRequestHeader("Connection", "close");
       
        xhr.onreadystatechange = function(){
               
                if(xhr.readyState==4){
                       
                        alert(xhr.responseText);
                       
                }
               
        }
       
        xhr.send(p);

---

Make sure you are using encodeURIComponent() on your variables for p.

OK thanks, but aren't special chars automaticly encoded by the POST call ?. or is this insufficient.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TimothyH

but aren't special chars automaticly encoded by the POST call ?

---

Nope.