Retrieving parameters from a URL

Question

Given a URL like the following, how can I parse the value of the query parameters? For example, in this case I want the value of def.

/abc?def='ghi'

I am using Django in my environment; is there a method on the request object that could help me?

I tried using self.request.get('def') but it is not returning the value ghi as I had hoped.

Answer 1

There is a new library called furl. I find this library to be most pythonic for doing url algebra. To install:

pip install furl

Code:

from furl import furl
f = furl("/abc?def='ghi'") 
print f.args['def']

Answer 2

Btw, I was having issues using parse_qs() and getting empty value parameters and learned that you have to pass a second optional parameter 'keep_blank_values' to return a list of the parameters in a query string that contain no values. It defaults to false. Some crappy written APIs require parameters to be present even if they contain no values

for k,v in urlparse.parse_qs(p.query, True).items():
  print k