How to parse $QUERY_STRING from a bash CGI script

Question

I have a bash script that is being used in a CGI. The CGI sets the $QUERY_STRING environment variable by reading everything after the ? in the URL. For example, http://example.com?a=123&b=456&c=ok sets QUERY_STRING=a=123&b=456&c=ok.

Somewhere I found the following ugliness:

b=$(echo "$QUERY_STRING" | sed -n 's/^.*b=\([^&]*\).*$/\1/p' | sed "s/%20/ /g")

which will set $b to whatever was found in $QUERY_STRING for b. However, my script has grown to have over ten input parameters. Is there an easier way to automatically convert the parameters in $QUERY_STRING into environment variables usable by bash?

Maybe I'll just use a for loop of some sort, but it'd be even better if the script was smart enough to automatically detect each parameter and maybe build an array that looks something like this:

${parm[a]}=123
${parm[b]}=456
${parm[c]}=ok

How could I write code to do that?

Answer 1

Following the correct answer, I've done myself some changes to support array variables like in this other question. I added also a decode function of which I can not find the author to give some credit.

Code appears somewhat messy, but it works. Changes and other recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

function cgi_decodevar() {
    [ $# -ne 1 ] && return
    local v t h
    # replace all + with whitespace and append %%
    t="${1//+/ }%%"
    while [ ${#t} -gt 0 -a "${t}" != "%" ]; do
        v="${v}${t%%\%*}" # digest up to the first %
        t="${t#*%}"       # remove digested part
        # decode if there is anything to decode and if not at end of string
        if [ ${#t} -gt 0 -a "${t}" != "%" ]; then
            h=${t:0:2} # save first two chars
            t="${t:2}" # remove these
            v="${v}"`echo -e \\\\x${h}` # convert hex to special char
        fi
    done
    # return decoded string
    echo "${v}"
    return
}

saveIFS=$IFS
IFS='=&'
VARS=($QUERY_STRING)
IFS=$saveIFS

for ((i=0; i<${#VARS[@]}; i+=2))
do
  curr="$(cgi_decodevar ${VARS[i]})"
  next="$(cgi_decodevar ${VARS[i+2]})"
  prev="$(cgi_decodevar ${VARS[i-2]})"
  value="$(cgi_decodevar ${VARS[i+1]})"

  array=${curr%"[]"}

  if  [ "$curr" == "$next" ] && [ "$curr" != "$prev" ] ;then
      j=0
      declare var_${array}[$j]="$value"
  elif [ $i -gt 1 ] && [ "$curr" == "$prev" ]; then
    j=$((j + 1))
    declare var_${array}[$j]="$value"
  else
    declare var_$curr="$value"
  fi
done