How to build a query string for a URL in C#?

Question

A common task when calling web resources from a code is building a query string to including all the necessary parameters. While by all means no rocket science, there are some nifty details you need to take care of like, appending an & if not the first parameter, encoding the parameters etc.

The code to do it is very simple, but a bit tedious:

StringBuilder SB = new StringBuilder();
if (NeedsToAddParameter A) 
{ 
  SB.Append("A="); SB.Append(HttpUtility.UrlEncode("TheValueOfA")); 
}

if (NeedsToAddParameter B) 
{
  if (SB.Length>0) SB.Append("&"); 
  SB.Append("B="); SB.Append(HttpUtility.UrlEncode("TheValueOfB")); }
}

This is such a common task one would expect a utility class to exist that makes it more elegant and readable. Scanning MSDN, I failed to find one—which brings me to the following question:

What is the most elegant clean way you know of doing the above?

Answer 1

I wrote a helper for my razor project using some of the hints from other answers.

The ParseQueryString business is necessary because we are not allowed to tamper with the QueryString object of the current request.

@helper GetQueryStringWithValue(string key, string value) {
    var queryString = System.Web.HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(HttpContext.Current.Request.QueryString.ToString());
    queryString[key] = value;
    @Html.Raw(queryString.ToString())
}

I use it like this:

location.search = '?@Helpers.GetQueryStringWithValue("var-name", "var-value")';

If you want it to take more than one value, just change the parameters to a Dictionary and add the pairs to the query string.

Answer 2

I added the following method to my PageBase class.

protected void Redirect(string url)
    {
        Response.Redirect(url);
    }
protected void Redirect(string url, NameValueCollection querystrings)
    {
        StringBuilder redirectUrl = new StringBuilder(url);

        if (querystrings != null)
        {
            for (int index = 0; index < querystrings.Count; index++)
            {
                if (index == 0)
                {
                    redirectUrl.Append("?");
                }

                redirectUrl.Append(querystrings.Keys[index]);
                redirectUrl.Append("=");
                redirectUrl.Append(HttpUtility.UrlEncode(querystrings[index]));

                if (index < querystrings.Count - 1)
                {
                    redirectUrl.Append("&");
                }
            }
        }

        this.Redirect(redirectUrl.ToString());
    }

To call:

NameValueCollection querystrings = new NameValueCollection();    
querystrings.Add("language", "en");
querystrings.Add("id", "134");
this.Redirect("http://www.mypage.com", querystrings);

Answer 3

I answered a similar question a while ago. Basically, the best way would be to use the class HttpValueCollection, which ASP.NET's Request.QueryString property actually is, unfortunately it is internal in the .NET framework. You could use Reflector to grab it (and place it into your Utils class). This way you could manipulate the query string like a NameValueCollection, but with all the url encoding/decoding issues taken care for you.

HttpValueCollection extends NameValueCollection, and has a constructor that takes an encoded query string (ampersands and question marks included), and it overrides a ToString() method to later rebuild the query string from the underlying collection.

Example:

  var coll = new HttpValueCollection();

  coll["userId"] = "50";
  coll["paramA"] = "A";
  coll["paramB"] = "B";      

  string query = coll.ToString(true); // true means use urlencode

  Console.WriteLine(query); // prints: userId=50&paramA=A&paramB=B

Answer 4

Combined the top answers to create an anonymous object version:

var queryString = HttpUtility2.BuildQueryString(new
{
    key2 = "value2",
    key1 = "value1",
});

That generates this:

key2=value2&key1=value1

Here's the code:

public static class HttpUtility2
{
    public static string BuildQueryString<T>(T obj)
    {
        var queryString = HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(string.Empty);

        foreach (var property in TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(typeof(T)).Cast<PropertyDescriptor>())
        {
            var value = (property.GetValue(obj) ?? "").ToString();
            queryString.Add(property.Name, value);
        }

        return queryString.ToString();
    }
}

Answer 5

How about creating extension methods that allow you to add the parameters in a fluent style like this?

string a = "http://www.somedomain.com/somepage.html"
    .AddQueryParam("A", "TheValueOfA")
    .AddQueryParam("B", "TheValueOfB")
    .AddQueryParam("Z", "TheValueOfZ");

string b = new StringBuilder("http://www.somedomain.com/anotherpage.html")
    .AddQueryParam("A", "TheValueOfA")
    .AddQueryParam("B", "TheValueOfB")
    .AddQueryParam("Z", "TheValueOfZ")
    .ToString(); 

Here's the overload that uses a string:

public static string AddQueryParam(
    this string source, string key, string value)
{
    string delim;
    if ((source == null) || !source.Contains("?"))
    {
        delim = "?";
    }
    else if (source.EndsWith("?") || source.EndsWith("&"))
    {
        delim = string.Empty;
    }
    else
    {
        delim = "&";
    }

    return source + delim + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(key)
        + "=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(value);
}

And here's the overload that uses a StringBuilder:

public static StringBuilder AddQueryParam(
    this StringBuilder source, string key, string value)
{
    bool hasQuery = false;
    for (int i = 0; i < source.Length; i++)
    {
        if (source[i] == '?')
        {
            hasQuery = true;
            break;
        }
    }

    string delim;
    if (!hasQuery)
    {
        delim = "?";
    }
    else if ((source[source.Length - 1] == '?')
        || (source[source.Length - 1] == '&'))
    {
        delim = string.Empty;
    }
    else
    {
        delim = "&";
    }

    return source.Append(delim).Append(HttpUtility.UrlEncode(key))
        .Append("=").Append(HttpUtility.UrlEncode(value));
}

Answer 6

Just wanted to throw in my 2 cents:

public static class HttpClientExt
{
    public static Uri AddQueryParams(this Uri uri, string query)
    {
        var ub = new UriBuilder(uri);
        ub.Query = string.IsNullOrEmpty(uri.Query) ? query : string.Join("&", uri.Query.Substring(1), query);
        return ub.Uri;
    }

    public static Uri AddQueryParams(this Uri uri, IEnumerable<string> query)
    {
        return uri.AddQueryParams(string.Join("&", query));
    } 

    public static Uri AddQueryParams(this Uri uri, string key, string value)
    {
        return uri.AddQueryParams(string.Join("=", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(key), HttpUtility.UrlEncode(value)));
    }

    public static Uri AddQueryParams(this Uri uri, params KeyValuePair<string,string>[] kvps)
    {
        return uri.AddQueryParams(kvps.Select(kvp => string.Join("=", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(kvp.Key), HttpUtility.UrlEncode(kvp.Value))));
    }

    public static Uri AddQueryParams(this Uri uri, IDictionary<string, string> kvps)
    {
        return uri.AddQueryParams(kvps.Select(kvp => string.Join("=", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(kvp.Key), HttpUtility.UrlEncode(kvp.Value))));
    }

    public static Uri AddQueryParams(this Uri uri, NameValueCollection nvc)
    {
        return uri.AddQueryParams(nvc.AllKeys.SelectMany(nvc.GetValues, (key, value) => string.Join("=", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(key), HttpUtility.UrlEncode(value))));
    }
}

The docs say that uri.Query will start with a ? if it's non-empty and you should trim it off if you're going to modify it.

Note that HttpUtility.UrlEncode is found in System.Web.

Usage:

var uri = new Uri("https://api.del.icio.us/v1/posts/suggest").AddQueryParam("url","http://stackoverflow.com")