When I send an API request to my backend application I a comment in the url as a query, however whenever a user uses certain characters like: #,& or % the url query breaks of at these characters.

Currently I have implemented this replaceAll functions to temporary change these characters and transform them back on the backend.

&comment=${candidate.comment
          .replaceAll("&", "*-and-*")
          .replaceAll("#", "*-hash-*")
          .replaceAll("%", " procent")
          .replaceAll("\n", "*line-break*")}

However this seems like an hassel to keep changing these characters.

Is there a proper way to handle the issue of using these characters in a query param?