title: Twitter URL encoding
body: <p>We're about to launch a little twitter Christmas competition, and I've run into a little snag.</p>
  
  <p>To enter, people will need to post a tweet in the following format:</p>
  
  <pre><code>@user blah, blah, blah #hashtag
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Currently, I have a form where they enter their answer (the blah, blah, blah) and a PHP script which encodes the entire statement and adds on the twitter url:</p>
  
  <pre><code>http://www.twitter.com/home?status=%40user%20blah%2Cblah%2Cblah%20%23hashtag
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Then takes the user to twitter and puts the status in the update field.</p>
  
  <p>However, whilst the spaces (%20) are decoded fine the @ and # characters remain as %40 &amp; %23 respectively, even when the tweet is posted. I cannot put the actual characters in the url as twitter mistakes this for a search.</p>
  
  <p>Is there any way to solve this? I'd like to do it without requiring username &amp; password etc if possible.</p>
  
  <p>Any help will be greatly appreciated.</p>