linux - URL encoding a string in bash script

Question

I am writing a bash script in where I am trying to submit a post variable, however wget is treating it as multiple URLS I believe because it is not URLENCODED... here is my basic thought

MESSAGE='I am trying to post this information'
wget -O test.txt http://xxxxxxxxx.com/alert.php --post-data 'key=xxxx&message='$MESSAGE''

I am getting errors and the alert.php is not getting the post variable plus it pretty mush is saying

can't resolve I can't resolve am can't resolve trying .. and so on.

My example above is a simple kinda sudo example but I believe if I can url encode it, it would pass, I even tried php like:

MESSAGE='I am trying to post this information'
MESSAGE=$(php -r 'echo urlencode("'$MESSAGE'");')

but php errors out.. any ideas? How can i pass the variable in $MESSAGE without php executing it?

Answer 1

On CentOS, no extra package needed:

python -c "import urllib;print urllib.quote(raw_input())" <<< "$message"