How to build query string with Javascript

Question

Just wondering if there is anything built-in to Javascript that can take a Form and return the query parameters, eg: "var1=value&var2=value2&arr[]=foo&arr[]=bar..."

I've been wondering this for years.

Answer 1

If you don't want to use a library, this should cover most/all of the same form element types.

function serialize(form) {
  if (!form || !form.elements) return;

  var serial = [], i, j, first;
  var add = function (name, value) {
    serial.push(encodeURIComponent(name) + '=' + encodeURIComponent(value));
  }

  var elems = form.elements;
  for (i = 0; i < elems.length; i += 1, first = false) {
    if (elems[i].name.length > 0) { /* don't include unnamed elements */
      switch (elems[i].type) {
        case 'select-one': first = true;
        case 'select-multiple':
          for (j = 0; j < elems[i].options.length; j += 1)
            if (elems[i].options[j].selected) {
              add(elems[i].name, elems[i].options[j].value);
              if (first) break; /* stop searching for select-one */
            }
          break;
        case 'checkbox':
        case 'radio': if (!elems[i].checked) break; /* else continue */
        default: add(elems[i].name, elems[i].value); break;
      }
    }
  }

  return serial.join('&');
}

Answer 2

Is is probably too late to answer your question.
I had the same question and I didn't like to keep appending strings to create a URL. So, I started using $.param as techhouse explained.
I also found a URI.js library that creates the URLs easily for you. There are several examples that will help you: URI.js Documentation.
Here is one of them:

var uri = new URI("?hello=world");
uri.setSearch("hello", "mars"); // returns the URI instance for chaining
// uri == "?hello=mars"

uri.setSearch({ foo: "bar", goodbye : ["world", "mars"] });
// uri == "?hello=mars&foo=bar&goodbye=world&goodbye=mars"

uri.setSearch("goodbye", "sun");
// uri == "?hello=mars&foo=bar&goodbye=sun"

// CAUTION: beware of arrays, the following are not quite the same
// If you're dealing with PHP, you probably want the latter…
uri.setSearch("foo", ["bar", "baz"]);
uri.setSearch("foo[]", ["bar", "baz"]);`

Answer 3

If you're using jQuery you might want to check out jQuery.param() http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.param/

Example:

var params = {
    parameter1: 'value1',
    parameter2: 'value2',
    parameter3: 'value3' 
};
​var query = $.param(params);
document.write(query);

Answer 4

querystring can help.

So, you can

const querystring = require('querystring')

url += '?' + querystring.stringify(parameters)

Answer 5

Without jQuery

var params = {
    parameter1: 'value_1',
    parameter2: 'value 2',
    parameter3: 'value&3' 
};

var esc = encodeURIComponent;
var query = Object.keys(params)
    .map(k => esc(k) + '=' + esc(params[k]))
    .join('&');

For browsers that don't support arrow function syntax which requires ES5, change the .map... line to

    .map(function(k) {return esc(k) + '=' + esc(params[k]);})

Answer 6

With jQuery you can do this by $.param

$.param({ action: 'ship', order_id: 123, fees: ['f1', 'f2'], 'label': 'a demo' })

// -> "action=ship&order_id=123&fees%5B%5D=f1&fees%5B%5D=f2&label=a+demo"