Get escaped URL parameter

Question

I'm looking for a jQuery plugin that can get URL parameters, and support this search string without outputting the JavaScript error: "malformed URI sequence". If there isn't a jQuery plugin that supports this, I need to know how to modify it to support this.

?search=%E6%F8%E5

The value of the URL parameter, when decoded, should be:

æøå

(the characters are Norwegian).

I don't have access to the server, so I can't modify anything on it.

Answer 1

If you don't know what the URL parameters will be and want to get an object with the keys and values that are in the parameters, you can use this:

function getParameters() {
  var searchString = window.location.search.substring(1),
      params = searchString.split("&"),
      hash = {};

  if (searchString == "") return {};
  for (var i = 0; i < params.length; i++) {
    var val = params[i].split("=");
    hash[unescape(val[0])] = unescape(val[1]);
  }
  return hash;
}

Calling getParameters() with a url like /posts?date=9/10/11&author=nilbus would return:

{
  date:   '9/10/11',
  author: 'nilbus'
}

I won't include the code here since it's even farther away from the question, but weareon.net posted a library that allows manipulation of the parameters in the URL too:

• Blog post: http://blog.weareon.net/working-with-url-parameters-in-javascript/
• Code: http://pastebin.ubuntu.com/1163515/

Answer 2

After reading all of the answers I ended up with this version with + a second function to use parameters as flags

function getURLParameter(name) {
    return decodeURIComponent((new RegExp('[?|&]' + name + '=' + '([^&;]+?)(&|#|;|$)','i').exec(location.search)||[,""])[1].replace(/\+/g, '%20'))||null;
}

function isSetURLParameter(name) {
    return (new RegExp('[?|&]' + name + '(?:[=|&|#|;|]|$)','i').exec(location.search) !== null)
}

Answer 3

You can use the browser native location.search property:

function getParameter(paramName) {
  var searchString = window.location.search.substring(1),
      i, val, params = searchString.split("&");

  for (i=0;i<params.length;i++) {
    val = params[i].split("=");
    if (val[0] == paramName) {
      return unescape(val[1]);
    }
  }
  return null;
}

But there are some jQuery plugins that can help you:

• query-object
• getURLParam

Answer 4

You should not use jQuery for something like this!
The modern way is to use small reusable modules through a package-manager like Bower.

I've created a tiny module that can parse the query string into an object. Use it like this:

// parse the query string into an object and get the property
queryString.parse(unescape(location.search)).search;
//=> æøå

Answer 5

I created a simple function to get URL parameter in JavaScript from a URL like this:

.....58e/web/viewer.html?page=*17*&getinfo=33


function buildLinkb(param) {
    var val = document.URL;
    var url = val.substr(val.indexOf(param))  
    var n=parseInt(url.replace(param+"=",""));
    alert(n+1); 
}
buildLinkb("page");

OUTPUT: 18

Answer 6

Based on the 999's answer:

function getURLParameter(name) {
    return decodeURIComponent(
        (location.search.match(RegExp("[?|&]"+name+'=(.+?)(&|$)'))||[,null])[1]
    );  
}

Changes:

• decodeURI() is replaced with decodeURIComponent()
• [?|&] is added at the beginning of the regexp