Web_convert_param() function in Load Runner

Q1: Web_convert_param() function in Load Runner
Q2: What is Web_convert_param() function in Load Runner


I recorded a script against an Java application that ultimately sends a HTTP POST request to the server being tested with an XML in the Body of the request. The script came out fine, except that the body (XML content) was URL encoded. It would have been fine if I didn't need to parameterize the data in the body but since I had to, I realized in a few seconds that I would have to do some extra work to convert the data from parameter file to URL encoded format. The data in parameter file is of the form:

Fname,Mname,Lname,Gen,SSN,A1,A2,A3,A4,A5,City,State,Zip
John,,Smith,,123456789,123,Main,St,#,88,TestCity,TestState,987654321

However, in the script, address is one field that is a concatenated string of A1 - A5 parameters with a space between each of them.

Further Research:
A1 - A5 are the components that make up the street address that is supposed to be concatenated to one field in the script. No problem.
sprintf(as,"%s %s %s %s %s", lr_eval_string("{a1}"), lr_eval_string("{a2}"), lr_eval_string("{a3}"), lr_eval_string("{a4}"), lr_eval_string("{a5}"));
lr_save_string(as, "addressStreet");

…but the problem is there are spaces in between this components, which we all know get converted to a '+' character in URL encoding. Ok, so I could've just used sprintf(as,"%s+%s+%s+%s+%s",…
But some of the addresses also have '#' signs that get converted into '%23'. Now I had 2 options:
1. remove all the addresses that have a '#' sign
2. write a URLEncode(char *) function that does the obvious.

In the 1st option the addresses can have other characters that need to get URL encoded as well. And if a sizeable chunk of the data given to me has these characters, I could lose a lot of records. Also I didn't want to have to modify the data every time I get a new 10,000 record file.
2nd option seemed the way to go. I ran my tests by removing the records with '#' character.

Solution:

Pass the 'XMLSource' parameter as an input to the web_convert_param function, and store the result as 'TargetXML'
web_convert_param("TargetXML", "SourceString={XMLSource}", "SourceEncoding=HTML", "TargetEncoding=URL", LAST);

So this web_convert_param function seemed to do exactly what I needed. I tried it out with a couple of different strings and it did as promised. So my new script had:
sprintf(as,"%s %s %s %s %s", lr_eval_string("{a1}"), lr_eval_string("{a2}"), lr_eval_string("{a3}"), lr_eval_string("{a4}"), lr_eval_string("{a5}"));
lr_save_string(as, "addressStreet");

web_convert_param("encAddressStreet", "SourceString={addressStreet}", "SourceEncoding=PLAIN", "TargetEncoding=URL", LAST);
lr_output_message("%s", lr_eval_string("{encAddressStreet}"));














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