code: public static String encode(String value) {
          try {
              // TODO: Potentially fix the plus signs that come out of encoding to be "%20"
              return URLEncoder.encode(value, "UTF-8");
          } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
              throw new EsHadoopIllegalArgumentException("Cannot encode string [" + value + "]", e);
          }
      }
docs: Encodes all characters in the string into "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" format.
  
  Allowed characters in this case are [a-zA-z0-9] and "_", "-", ".", "*", and space (which becomes a '+' sign)
  
  @param value UTF-8 string to encode.
  @return String in "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" format.