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Is there a plugin-less way of retrieving query string values via jQuery (or without)?

If so, how? If not, is there a plugin which can do so?

6
  • I use the plugin getUrlParam described in jQuery-Plugin – getUrlParam (version 2). Commented May 23, 2009 at 8:19
  • 69
    A plain javascript solution without RegEx: css-tricks.com/snippets/javascript/get-url-variables Commented Oct 29, 2012 at 14:50
  • 6
    Although the top solution to the question deserves its popularity because of its excellent observation that jQuery is not needed, its method of creating new regular expressions and re-parsing the query string for every parameter desired is extremely inefficient. Far more efficient (and versatile) solutions have been in existence for a long time, for example within this article reprinted here: htmlgoodies.com/beyond/javascript/article.php/11877_3755006_3/… Commented May 14, 2013 at 6:00
  • 1
    possible duplicate of JavaScript query string Commented Jul 31, 2013 at 23:09
  • 4
    Joseph, the "excellent observation that jQuery is not needed"? Of course it's not needed. Everything jQuery does, it does using JavaScript. People don't use jQuery because it does stuff that JavaScript can't do. The point of jQuery is convenience. Commented May 30, 2014 at 1:12

73 Answers 73

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3

Most pretty but basic:

data = {};
$.each(
    location.search.substr(1).split('&').filter(Boolean).map(function(kvpairs){
        return kvpairs.split('=')
    }),
    function(i,values) {
        data[values.shift()] = values.join('=')
    }
);

It doesn't handle values lists such as ?a[]=1&a[]2

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3 Comments

Neat! You may need to trim the leading '?' off the first item (I don't know if that's always necessary, but many answers here do) and you need to perform some unescaping of the value too (decodeURIComponent, plusses-to-spaces)
Thank you, absolutely, and we also need a .filter(Boolean) to remove an empty string item in list when location.search is empty. That is: location.search.substr(1).split('&').filter(Boolean).map(...
And the reverse: a query string from the returned hashmap: $.map(queryhash, function(v,k){ return [k,v].join('=')}).join('&')
3

Use:

  $(document).ready(function () {
      var urlParams = {};
      (function () {
          var match,
          pl = /\+/g, // Regex for replacing addition symbol with a space
              search = /([^&=]+)=?([^&]*)/g,
              decode = function (s) {
                  return decodeURIComponent(s.replace(pl, " "));
              },
              query = window.location.search.substring(1);

          while (match = search.exec(query))
              urlParams[decode(match[1])] = decode(match[2]);
      })();
      if (urlParams["q1"] === 1) {
          return 1;
      }

Please check and let me know your comments. Also refer to How to get querystring value using jQuery.

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2 Comments

That's identical to Soheil's answer which is itself a copy of Andy E's answer wrapped in jQuery and with the check on the end. You've also copied Soheil's mistake in the last section: there's no way that urlParams["q1"] can === 1 since it will always be a string not an integer at that point, and also return 1 from $(document).ready() doesn't really make sense either. Where did you get this code from?
@Rup : I have got this from codeproject.com/Tips/529496/Handling-QueryString-Using-jQuery
3

I recommend Dar Lessons as a good plugin. I have worked with it fo a long time. You can also use the following code. Jus put var queryObj = {}; before document.ready and put the bellow code in the beginning of document.ready. After this code you can use queryObj["queryObjectName"] for any query object you have

var querystring = location.search.replace('?', '').split('&');
for (var i = 0; i < querystring.length; i++) {
    var name = querystring[i].split('=')[0];
    var value = querystring[i].split('=')[1];
    queryObj[name] = value;
}
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2 Comments

Two plugs for Dar Lessons in two posts? I don't think we can recommend the current version at least: it's vulnerable to script injection attacks. (I've emailed him to let him know). Like a lot of the split('=') solutions here already you're missing decodeURIComponent, and you might also want to handle missing values more gracefully too.
Dar Lessons has now released 1.1 which fixes the script injection attack.
2

This will parse variables AND arrays from a URL string. It uses neither regex or any external library.

function url2json(url) {
   var obj={};
   function arr_vals(arr){
      if (arr.indexOf(',') > 1){
         var vals = arr.slice(1, -1).split(',');
         var arr = [];
         for (var i = 0; i < vals.length; i++)
            arr[i]=vals[i];
         return arr;
      }
      else
         return arr.slice(1, -1);
   }
   function eval_var(avar){
      if (!avar[1])
          obj[avar[0]] = '';
      else
      if (avar[1].indexOf('[') == 0)
         obj[avar[0]] = arr_vals(avar[1]);
      else
         obj[avar[0]] = avar[1];
   }
   if (url.indexOf('?') > -1){
      var params = url.split('?')[1];
      if(params.indexOf('&') > 2){
         var vars = params.split('&');
         for (var i in vars)
            eval_var(vars[i].split('='));
      }
      else
         eval_var(params.split('='));
   }
   return obj;
}

Example:

var url = "http://www.x.com?luckyNums=[31,21,6]&name=John&favFoods=[pizza]&noVal"
console.log(url2json(url));

Output:

[object]
   noVal: ""
   favFoods: "pizza"
   name:     "John"
   luckyNums:
      0: "31"
      1: "21"
      2: "6"
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Comments

2

See this post or use this:

<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
    $(document).ready(function()
    {
        var urlParams = {};
        (function ()
        {
            var match,
            pl= /\+/g,  // Regular expression for replacing addition symbol with a space
            search = /([^&=]+)=?([^&]*)/g,
            decode = function (s) { return decodeURIComponent(s.replace(pl, " ")); },
            query  = window.location.search.substring(1);

            while (match = search.exec(query))
                urlParams[decode(match[1])] = decode(match[2]);
        })();

        if (urlParams["q1"] === 1)
        {
            return 1;
        }
    });
</script>
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3 Comments

Your sample usage - returning from a document ready - seems odd, and AFAICS it'll never work: decode() will only ever return a string and your triple-equals-comparing it to an integer. Otherwise seems a neat solution.
... although it's the same as Andy E's solution above.
The link is broken.
2

This didn't work for me, I want to match ?b as the b parameter is present, and not match ?return as the r parameter, here is my solution.

window.query_param = function(name) {
  var param_value, params;

  params = location.search.replace(/^\?/, '');
  params = _.map(params.split('&'), function(s) {
    return s.split('=');
  });

  param_value = _.select(params, function(s) {
    return s.first === name;
  })[0];

  if (param_value) {
    return decodeURIComponent(param_value[1] || '');
  } else {
    return null;
  }
};
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2 Comments

Which answer here didn't work for you, with those problems? (That'd be worth a comment on the answer itself, and I'd be interested to know too.) As for your solution, that looks like it's just a string-split solution using underscore.js? You're missing a call to decodeURIComponent probably.
Nice catch, I added the decodeURIComponent (and a spec for it). The most upvoted answer (the 2600 points one for jolly) doesn't works as expected: doesn't returns null for non-found parameters, and doesn't detect ?b for instance a present parameter.
2

Here is String prototype implementation:

String.prototype.getParam = function( str ){
    str = str.replace(/[\[]/,"\\\[").replace(/[\]]/,"\\\]");
    var regex = new RegExp( "[\\?&]*"+str+"=([^&#]*)" );    
    var results = regex.exec( this );
    if( results == null ){
        return "";
    } else {
        return results[1];
    }
}

Example call:

var status = str.getParam("status")

str can be a query string or url

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2 Comments

That's basically the same as the top answer though, less some some of the unescaping, just put on the String.prototype.
@Rup This is useful for parsing any string query, not just in a URL. for example Oauth2 returns token response as a query string, this String prototype will be useful for parsing, most important is [\\?&]* instead of [\\?&] in RegExp, for parsing query string staring with new line
2

Doing this reliably is more involved than one may think at first.

  1. location.search, which is used in other answers, is brittle and should be avoided - for example, it returns empty if someone screws up and puts a #fragment identifier before the ?query string.
  2. There are a number of ways URLs get automatically escaped in the browser, which makes decodeURIComponent pretty much mandatory, in my opinion.
  3. Many query strings are generated from user input, which means assumptions about the URL content are very bad. Including very basic things like that each key is unique or even has a value.

To solve this, here is a configurable API with a healthy dose of defensive programming. Note that it can be made half the size if you are willing to hardcode some of the variables, or if the input can never include hasOwnProperty, etc.

Version 1: Returns a data object with names and values for each parameter. It effectively de-duplicates them and always respects the first one found from left-to-right.

function getQueryData(url, paramKey, pairKey, missingValue, decode) {

    var query, queryStart, fragStart, pairKeyStart, i, len, name, value, result;

    if (!url || typeof url !== 'string') {
        url = location.href; // more robust than location.search, which is flaky
    }
    if (!paramKey || typeof paramKey !== 'string') {
        paramKey = '&';
    }
    if (!pairKey || typeof pairKey !== 'string') {
        pairKey = '=';
    }
    // when you do not explicitly tell the API...
    if (arguments.length < 5) {
        // it will unescape parameter keys and values by default...
        decode = true;
    }

    queryStart = url.indexOf('?');
    if (queryStart >= 0) {
        // grab everything after the very first ? question mark...
        query = url.substring(queryStart + 1);
    } else {
        // assume the input is already parameter data...
        query = url;
    }
    // remove fragment identifiers...
    fragStart = query.indexOf('#');
    if (fragStart >= 0) {
        // remove everything after the first # hash mark...
        query = query.substring(0, fragStart);
    }
    // make sure at this point we have enough material to do something useful...
    if (query.indexOf(paramKey) >= 0 || query.indexOf(pairKey) >= 0) {
        // we no longer need the whole query, so get the parameters...
        query = query.split(paramKey);
        result = {};
        // loop through the parameters...
        for (i = 0, len = query.length; i < len; i = i + 1) {
            pairKeyStart = query[i].indexOf(pairKey);
            if (pairKeyStart >= 0) {
                name = query[i].substring(0, pairKeyStart);
            } else {
                name = query[i];
            }
            // only continue for non-empty names that we have not seen before...
            if (name && !Object.prototype.hasOwnProperty.call(result, name)) {
                if (decode) {
                    // unescape characters with special meaning like ? and #
                    name = decodeURIComponent(name);
                }
                if (pairKeyStart >= 0) {
                    value = query[i].substring(pairKeyStart + 1);
                    if (value) {
                        if (decode) {
                            value = decodeURIComponent(value);
                        }
                    } else {
                        value = missingValue;
                    }
                } else {
                    value = missingValue;
                }
                result[name] = value;
            }
        }
        return result;
    }
}

Version 2: Returns a data map object with two identical length arrays, one for names and one for values, with an index for each parameter. This one supports duplicate names and intentionally does not de-duplicate them, because that is probably why you would want to use this format.

function getQueryData(url, paramKey, pairKey, missingValue, decode) {

    var query, queryStart, fragStart, pairKeyStart, i, len, name, value, result;

    if (!url || typeof url !== 'string') {
          url = location.href; // more robust than location.search, which is flaky
    }
        if (!paramKey || typeof paramKey !== 'string') {
            paramKey = '&';
        }
        if (!pairKey || typeof pairKey !== 'string') {
            pairKey = '=';
        }
        // when you do not explicitly tell the API...
        if (arguments.length < 5) {
            // it will unescape parameter keys and values by default...
            decode = true;
        }

        queryStart = url.indexOf('?');
        if (queryStart >= 0) {
            // grab everything after the very first ? question mark...
            query = url.substring(queryStart + 1);
        } else {
            // assume the input is already parameter data...
            query = url;
        }
        // remove fragment identifiers...
        fragStart = query.indexOf('#');
        if (fragStart >= 0) {
            // remove everything after the first # hash mark...
            query = query.substring(0, fragStart);
        }
        // make sure at this point we have enough material to do something useful...
        if (query.indexOf(paramKey) >= 0 || query.indexOf(pairKey) >= 0) {
            // we no longer need the whole query, so get the parameters...
            query = query.split(paramKey);
            result = {
                names: [],
                values: []
            };
            // loop through the parameters...
            for (i = 0, len = query.length; i < len; i = i + 1) {
                pairKeyStart = query[i].indexOf(pairKey);
                if (pairKeyStart >= 0) {
                    name = query[i].substring(0, pairKeyStart);
                } else {
                    name = query[i];
                }
                // only continue for non-empty names...
                if (name) {
                    if (decode) {
                        // unescape characters with special meaning like ? and #
                        name = decodeURIComponent(name);
                    }
                    if (pairKeyStart >= 0) {
                        value = query[i].substring(pairKeyStart + 1);
                        if (value) {
                            if (decode) {
                                value = decodeURIComponent(value);
                            }
                        } else {
                            value = missingValue;
                        }
                    } else {
                        value = missingValue;
                    }
                    result.names.push(name);
                    result.values.push(value);
                }
           }
           return result;
       }
   }
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3 Comments

Neat, though the majority of answers here deal with splitting up the query part into parameters rather than extracting it from an arbitrary URL. Most of them assume we're on the current page and so just use location.search to get the string you're extracting.
this is not the point of the question, we need to extract each pair of query parameters as key/value, supporting arrays, empty values, etc.. by the way, "?hello#haha" is not a good behavior, as the #haha usually refeers to an anchor which does not make part of the parameter "hello"
I took the very short and vague question to mean something very different than what everyone else did. It's now obvious to me what was meant, and I have updated my answer to include a significantly better design that is on par.
1

The shortest possible expression in terms of size to obtain a query object seems to be:

var params = {};
location.search.substr(1).replace(/([^&=]*)=([^&]*)&?/g,
  function () { params[decodeURIComponent(arguments[1])] = decodeURIComponent(arguments[2]); });

You can make use of the A element to parse a URI from a string into its location-like components (to get rid of #..., for example):

var a = document.createElement('a');
a.href = url;
// Parse a.search.substr(1)... as above
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Comments

1

This function will return a parsed JavaScript object with any arbitrarily nested values using recursion as necessary.

Here's a jsfiddle example.

[
  '?a=a',
  '&b=a',
  '&b=b',
  '&c[]=a',
  '&c[]=b',
  '&d[a]=a',
  '&d[a]=x',
  '&e[a][]=a',
  '&e[a][]=b',
  '&f[a][b]=a',
  '&f[a][b]=x',
  '&g[a][b][]=a',
  '&g[a][b][]=b',
  '&h=%2B+%25',
  '&i[aa=b',
  '&i[]=b',
  '&j=',
  '&k',
  '&=l',
  '&abc=foo',
  '&def=%5Basf%5D',
  '&ghi=[j%3Dkl]',
  '&xy%3Dz=5',
  '&foo=b%3Dar',
  '&xy%5Bz=5'
].join('');

Given any of the above test examples.

var qs = function(a) {
  var b, c, e;
  b = {};
  c = function(d) {
    return d && decodeURIComponent(d.replace(/\+/g, " "));
  };
  e = function(f, g, h) {
    var i, j, k, l;
    h = h ? h : null;
    i = /(.+?)\[(.+?)?\](.+)?/g.exec(g);
    if (i) {
      [j, k, l] = [i[1], i[2], i[3]]
      if (k === void 0) {
        if (f[j] === void 0) {
          f[j] = [];
        }
        f[j].push(h);
      } else {
        if (typeof f[j] !== "object") {
          f[j] = {};
        }
        if (l) {
          e(f[j], k + l, h);
        } else {
          e(f[j], k, h);
        }
      }
    } else {
      if (f.hasOwnProperty(g)) {
        if (Array.isArray(f[g])) {
          f[g].push(h);
        } else {
          f[g] = [].concat.apply([f[g]], [h]);
        }
      } else {
        f[g] = h;
      }
      return f[g];
    }
  };
  a.replace(/^(\?|#)/, "").replace(/([^#&=?]+)?=?([^&=]+)?/g, function(m, n, o) {
    n && e(b, c(n), c(o));
  });
  return b;
};
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2 Comments

Looks broadly good, but why pre-minify it? It's tricky to follow in places as-is; in particular you're doing a few nasty things around the right-square-bracket line. Also an input something like c[xx=a&c[]=b will crash it.
My intention wasn't to pre-minify it, rather I just suck at naming variables, so I didn't try to come up with better names. I reworked the code to accommodate your example inputs and respond appropriately. I also switched to using regex's instead of trying to slice strings (which as you pointed out didn't always work).
1

This will work... You need to call this function where you need get the parameter by passing its name...

function getParameterByName(name)
{
  name = name.replace(/[\[]/,"\\\[").replace(/[\]]/,"\\\]");
  var regexS = "[\\?&]"+name+"=([^&#]*)";
  var regex = new RegExp( regexS );
  var results = regex.exec( window.location.href );
  alert(results[1]);
  if (results == null)
    return "";
  else
    return results[1];
}
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1 Comment

That's almost identical to the top regexp answer except you're matching the whole URL not just the query string part and you're not removing escapes in the result.
1

Quick, easy, and fast:

The function:

function getUrlVar() {
    var result = {};
    var location = window.location.href.split('#');
    var parts = location[0].replace(/[?&]+([^=&]+)=([^&]*)/gi, function(m,key,value) {
        result [key] = value;
    });
    return result;
}

Usage:

var varRequest = getUrlVar()["theUrlVarName"];
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2 Comments

That's similar to the fourth answer, albeit with less escaping and you don't accept ?key only params like that does (though you don't see them anymore). I'm not sure you need the i on the regexp options, and you're working with the whole href not just the search part which seems odd but it ought not make a difference.
@Rup Hi, Thank you for your comment - I can't see the similarity... He use decodeURIComponent which will work great but if we try it with accent characters - in some cases it fails (FF mostly) My answer As you can see is simple and quick that will fit most of the programmers who need a quick solution for query string variable extraction. Adding the i (case insensitivity) is a bit more flexible but can be removed, I agree.
-1 
// Parse query string
var params = {}, queryString = location.hash.substring(1),
    regex = /([^&=]+)=([^&]*)/g,
    m;
while (m = regex.exec(queryString)) {
    params[decodeURIComponent(m[1])] = decodeURIComponent(m[2]);
}
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1 Comment

Uh, hash != querystring.
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