How to encode or decode variables in PHP

I want to encode a variable in PHP5, do some operation and then decode it. For this I want to know which function is appropriate for this kind of operations. In short, is there any function that will encode and decode a variable? How any one provide me any solution with some details?

You can use MySQL's encode and decode functions in your PHP code as follows:

PHP Code:

---

<?php
$encVariable = mysql_query("SELECT ENCODE('variable_name','')");
$encString = mysql_fetch_array($encVariable);
$val_enc = $encodedString[0];
echo $val_enc."<br>\n";

$decVariable = mysql_query("SELECT DECODE('".$val_enc."','')");
$decString = mysql_fetch_array($decVariable);
$val_dec = $decString[0];
echo $val_dec;

?>

---

Use urlencode () and urldecode (). Here is how to use them.

urlencode

This function is convenient when encoding a string to be used in a query part of a URL.

PHP Code:

---

string urlencode (string $str) 


---

where,

str = The string to be encoded.

urldecode

Decodes any encoding in the given string.

PHP Code:

---

string urldecode (string $str) 


---

where,

str = The string to be decoded.