Getting percent sign into an URL in a footnote

Question

I'm using the url package. Now, I have some some url with a percent sign in it and want to place it in a footnote. When I let the % where it is, I get a comment, and the whole thing fails to compile because of some unmatched brackets. When it's at the end of a line, it doesn't show up at all in the result. When I write \% instead, this gets literally into the output—but I want the url to be displayed correctly.

What could I do?

Answer 1

For URLs in footnotes or inside other macro arguments use \urldef to define it first as a macro:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{url}
\urldef\myurl\url{foo%.com}
\begin{document}
text\footnote{WWW: \myurl}
\end{document}

Answer 2

The easiest way is to simply escape it.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\begin{document}
    text\footnote{%
        \href{http://example.com/name\%27s-page}{http://example.com/name's-page}%
    }
\end{document}