c# - What's the difference between Uri.ToString() and Uri.AbsoluteUri?

Question

As a comment to an Azure question just now, @smarx noted

I think it's generally better to do blob.Uri.AbsoluteUri than blob.Uri.ToString().

Is there a reason for this? The documentation for Uri.AbsoluteUri notes that it "Gets the absolute URI", Uri.ToString() "Gets a canonical string representation for the specified instance."

Answer 1

Given for example:

UriBuilder builder = new UriBuilder("http://somehost/somepath");
builder.Query = "somekey=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode("some+value");
Uri someUri = builder.Uri;

In this case, Uri.ToString() will return a human-readable URL: http://somehost/somepath?somekey=some+value

Uri.AbsoluteUri on the other hand will return the encoded form as HttpUtility.UrlEncode returned it: http://somehost/somepath?somekey=some%2bvalue