A wierd problem while encoding URLs

Question

Hi all,
I'm facing a wierd problem with the java.net.URLEncoder class. The encode function in this class is used for encoding URL based on standards like "UTF-8" etc..
I need to encode the URLs, because i have to send this information in a XML to another server.. Here's what the URLEncoder is doing if i give it the URL
http://mydomain.com:80/myServlet?_fileName=filename.mp3&_useStreaming=true
its encoding this as
http%3A%2F%2Fmydomain.com%3A80%2FmyServlet%3F_fileName%3Dfilename.mp3%26_useStreaming%3Dtrue
but, all I wanted is to encode only '&' character ( as XML misinterprets this character with schemes ).
So, my question is .. is there any way that i can selectively encode the characters in the URL?
Any help wud be appriciated in this regard. :-)

Answer 1

I accept what you are saying.. URLEncoder encodes any string that's passed to it..
I infact have two different problems in hand.. The reason i mentioned only one above is because the solution to the first problem cud as well solve the second.. Anyway, here's the second problem ...
I'm recieving an XML from a server, where i get the URL info and i have to download the CONTENT from that URL.. Sample xml is given below
<Music>
<Singer>Tata Young</Singer>
<contentURL>http://myMusic.com/sexy naughty.mp3</contentURL>
</Music>
if you see the URL in the xml, that infact contains spaces in it.. I have my logic which checks if the given URL is a absolute URL or relative URL
if( relative URL)
I append "http://domain name:" stuff to make it absolute
else
i connect to the URL directly to get the Content
I'm using
URI i = new URI(str);
i.isAbsolute() method to determine whether its a absolute URL or not..
but this method doesn't seem to work for URLs that have spaces in them.. So, i encoded the URL and tried passing it to the method.. but it still doesn't work..
I probed into URI class itself and found out to my amazement that URI class assumes that URL contains only alpha numeric characters and few special characters like '+' , '/' , ':' etc..
Since the encoded URL has '%' character in it.. its not able to say that its a absolute URL.. Tht's the reason I asked for selective encoding.. ( say, which encodes only [space] character)..