How to parse a query string into a NameValueCollec

Question

I would like to parse a string such as p1=6&p2=7&p3=8 into a NameValueCollection.

What is the most elegant way of doing this when you don't have access to the Page.Request object?

Answer 1

There's a built-in .NET utility for this: HttpUtility.ParseQueryString

// C#
NameValueCollection qscoll = HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(querystring);

' VB.NET
Dim qscoll As NameValueCollection = HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(querystring)

You may need to replace querystring with new Uri(fullUrl).Query.

Answer 2

This is my code, I think it's very useful:

public String GetQueryString(string ItemToRemoveOrInsert = null, string InsertValue = null )
{
    System.Collections.Specialized.NameValueCollection filtered = new System.Collections.Specialized.NameValueCollection(Request.QueryString);
    if (ItemToRemoveOrInsert != null)
    {
        filtered.Remove(ItemToRemoveOrInsert);
        if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(InsertValue))
        {
            filtered.Add(ItemToRemoveOrInsert, InsertValue);
        }
    }

    string StrQr = string.Join("&", filtered.AllKeys.Select(key => key + "=" + filtered[key]).ToArray());
    if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(StrQr)){
        StrQr="?" + StrQr;
    }

    return StrQr;
}

Answer 3

If you want to avoid the dependency on System.Web that is required to use HttpUtility.ParseQueryString, you could use the Uri extension method ParseQueryString found in System.Net.Http.

Make sure to add a reference (if you haven't already) to System.Net.Http in your project.

Note that you have to convert the response body to a valid Uri so that ParseQueryString (in System.Net.Http)works.

string body = "value1=randomvalue1&value2=randomValue2";

// "http://localhost/query?" is added to the string "body" in order to create a valid Uri.
string urlBody = "http://localhost/query?" + body;
NameValueCollection coll = new Uri(urlBody).ParseQueryString();

Answer 4

If you don't want the System.Web dependency, just paste this source code from HttpUtility class.

I just whipped this together from the source code of Mono. It contains the HttpUtility and all it's dependencies (like IHtmlString, Helpers, HttpEncoder, HttpQSCollection).

Then use HttpUtility.ParseQueryString.

https://gist.github.com/bjorn-ali-goransson/b04a7c44808bb2de8cca3fc9a3762f9c

Answer 5

I wanted to remove the dependency on System.Web so that I could parse the query string of a ClickOnce deployment, while having the prerequisites limited to the "Client-only Framework Subset".

I liked rp's answer. I added some additional logic.

public static NameValueCollection ParseQueryString(string s)
    {
        NameValueCollection nvc = new NameValueCollection();

        // remove anything other than query string from url
        if(s.Contains("?"))
        {
            s = s.Substring(s.IndexOf('?') + 1);
        }

        foreach (string vp in Regex.Split(s, "&"))
        {
            string[] singlePair = Regex.Split(vp, "=");
            if (singlePair.Length == 2)
            {
                nvc.Add(singlePair[0], singlePair[1]);
            }
            else
            {
                // only one key with no value specified in query string
                nvc.Add(singlePair[0], string.Empty);
            }
        }

        return nvc;
    }

Answer 6

HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(Request.Url.Query) return is HttpValueCollection (internal class). It inherits from NameValueCollection.

    var qs = HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(Request.Url.Query);
    qs.Remove("foo"); 

    string url = "~/Default.aspx"; 
    if (qs.Count > 0)
       url = url + "?" + qs.ToString();

    Response.Redirect(url);