How can I get query string values in JavaScript?

Solution 1:

Update: June-2021

For a specific case when you need all query params:

const urlSearchParams = new URLSearchParams(window.location.search);
const params = Object.fromEntries(urlSearchParams.entries());

Update: Sep-2018

You can use URLSearchParams which is simple and has decent (but not complete) browser support.

const urlParams = new URLSearchParams(window.location.search);
const myParam = urlParams.get('myParam');

Original

You don't need jQuery for that purpose. You can use just some pure JavaScript:

function getParameterByName(name, url = window.location.href) {
    name = name.replace(/[\[\]]/g, '\\$&');
    var regex = new RegExp('[?&]' + name + '(=([^&#]*)|&|#|$)'),
        results = regex.exec(url);
    if (!results) return null;
    if (!results[2]) return '';
    return decodeURIComponent(results[2].replace(/\+/g, ' '));
}

Usage:

// query string: ?foo=lorem&bar=&baz
var foo = getParameterByName('foo'); // "lorem"
var bar = getParameterByName('bar'); // "" (present with empty value)
var baz = getParameterByName('baz'); // "" (present with no value)
var qux = getParameterByName('qux'); // null (absent)

NOTE: If a parameter is present several times (?foo=lorem&foo=ipsum), you will get the first value (lorem). There is no standard about this and usages vary, see for example this question: Authoritative position of duplicate HTTP GET query keys.

NOTE: The function is case-sensitive. If you prefer case-insensitive parameter name, add 'i' modifier to RegExp

NOTE: If you're getting a no-useless-escape eslint error, you can replace name = name.replace(/[\[\]]/g, '\\$&'); with name = name.replace(/[[\]]/g, '\\$&').

This is an update based on the new URLSearchParams specs to achieve the same result more succinctly. See answer titled "URLSearchParams" below.

Solution 2:

Some of the solutions posted here are inefficient. Repeating the regular expression search every time the script needs to access a parameter is completely unnecessary, one single function to split up the parameters into an associative-array style object is enough. If you're not working with the HTML 5 History API, this is only necessary once per page load. The other suggestions here also fail to decode the URL correctly.

var urlParams;
(window.onpopstate = function () {
    var match,
        pl     = /\+/g,  // Regex for replacing addition symbol with a space
        search = /([^&=]+)=?([^&]*)/g,
        decode = function (s) { return decodeURIComponent(s.replace(pl, " ")); },
        query  = window.location.search.substring(1);
  
    urlParams = {};
    while (match = search.exec(query))
       urlParams[decode(match[1])] = decode(match[2]);
})();

Example querystring:

?i=main&mode=front&sid=de8d49b78a85a322c4155015fdce22c4&enc=+Hello%20&empty

Result:

 urlParams = {
    enc: " Hello ",
    i: "main",
    mode: "front",
    sid: "de8d49b78a85a322c4155015fdce22c4",
    empty: ""
}

alert(urlParams["mode"]);
// -> "front"

alert("empty" in urlParams);
// -> true

This could easily be improved upon to handle array-style query strings too. An example of this is here, but since array-style parameters aren't defined in RFC 3986 I won't pollute this answer with the source code. For those interested in a "polluted" version, look at campbeln's answer below.

Also, as pointed out in the comments, ; is a legal delimiter for key=value pairs. It would require a more complicated regex to handle ; or &, which I think is unnecessary because it's rare that ; is used and I would say even more unlikely that both would be used. If you need to support ; instead of &, just swap them in the regex.

If you're using a server-side preprocessing language, you might want to use its native JSON functions to do the heavy lifting for you. For example, in PHP you can write:

<script>var urlParams = <?php echo json_encode($_GET, JSON_HEX_TAG);?>;</script>

Much simpler!

#UPDATED

A new capability would be to retrieve repeated params as following myparam=1&myparam=2. There is not a specification, however, most of the current approaches follow the generation of an array.

myparam = ["1", "2"]

So, this is the approach to manage it:

let urlParams = {};
(window.onpopstate = function () {
    let match,
        pl = /\+/g,  // Regex for replacing addition symbol with a space
        search = /([^&=]+)=?([^&]*)/g,
        decode = function (s) {
            return decodeURIComponent(s.replace(pl, " "));
        },
        query = window.location.search.substring(1);

    while (match = search.exec(query)) {
        if (decode(match[1]) in urlParams) {
            if (!Array.isArray(urlParams[decode(match[1])])) {
                urlParams[decode(match[1])] = [urlParams[decode(match[1])]];
            }
            urlParams[decode(match[1])].push(decode(match[2]));
        } else {
            urlParams[decode(match[1])] = decode(match[2]);
        }
    }
})();

Solution 3:

ES2015 (ES6)

getQueryStringParams = query => {
    return query
        ? (/^[?#]/.test(query) ? query.slice(1) : query)
            .split('&')
            .reduce((params, param) => {
                    let [key, value] = param.split('=');
                    params[key] = value ? decodeURIComponent(value.replace(/\+/g, ' ')) : '';
                    return params;
                }, {}
            )
        : {}
};

Without jQuery

var qs = (function(a) {
    if (a == "") return {};
    var b = {};
    for (var i = 0; i < a.length; ++i)
    {
        var p=a[i].split('=', 2);
        if (p.length == 1)
            b[p[0]] = "";
        else
            b[p[0]] = decodeURIComponent(p[1].replace(/\+/g, " "));
    }
    return b;
})(window.location.search.substr(1).split('&'));

With an URL like ?topic=123&name=query+string, the following will return:

qs["topic"];    // 123
qs["name"];     // query string
qs["nothere"];  // undefined (object)

Google method

Tearing Google's code I found the method they use: getUrlParameters

function (b) {
    var c = typeof b === "undefined";
    if (a !== h && c) return a;
    for (var d = {}, b = b || k[B][vb], e = b[p]("?"), f = b[p]("#"), b = (f === -1 ? b[Ya](e + 1) : [b[Ya](e + 1, f - e - 1), "&", b[Ya](f + 1)][K](""))[z]("&"), e = i.dd ? ia : unescape, f = 0, g = b[w]; f < g; ++f) {
        var l = b[f][p]("=");
        if (l !== -1) {
            var q = b[f][I](0, l),
                l = b[f][I](l + 1),
                l = l[Ca](/\+/g, " ");
            try {
                d[q] = e(l)
            } catch (A) {}
        }
    }
    c && (a = d);
    return d
}

It is obfuscated, but it is understandable. It does not work because some variables are undefined.

They start to look for parameters on the url from ? and also from the hash #. Then for each parameter they split in the equal sign b[f][p]("=") (which looks like indexOf, they use the position of the char to get the key/value). Having it split they check whether the parameter has a value or not, if it has then they store the value of d, otherwise they just continue.

In the end the object d is returned, handling escaping and the + sign. This object is just like mine, it has the same behavior.

My method as a jQuery plugin

(function($) {
    $.QueryString = (function(paramsArray) {
        let params = {};

        for (let i = 0; i < paramsArray.length; ++i)
        {
            let param = paramsArray[i]
                .split('=', 2);
            
            if (param.length !== 2)
                continue;
            
            params[param[0]] = decodeURIComponent(param[1].replace(/\+/g, " "));
        }
            
        return params;
    })(window.location.search.substr(1).split('&'))
})(jQuery);

Usage

//Get a param
$.QueryString.param
//-or-
$.QueryString["param"]
//This outputs something like...
//"val"

//Get all params as object
$.QueryString
//This outputs something like...
//Object { param: "val", param2: "val" }

//Set a param (only in the $.QueryString object, doesn't affect the browser's querystring)
$.QueryString.param = "newvalue"
//This doesn't output anything, it just updates the $.QueryString object

//Convert object into string suitable for url a querystring (Requires jQuery)
$.param($.QueryString)
//This outputs something like...
//"param=newvalue&param2=val"

//Update the url/querystring in the browser's location bar with the $.QueryString object
history.replaceState({}, '', "?" + $.param($.QueryString));
//-or-
history.pushState({}, '', "?" + $.param($.QueryString));

Performance test (split method against regex method) (jsPerf)

Preparation code: methods declaration

Split test code

var qs = window.GetQueryString(query);

var search = qs["q"];
var value = qs["value"];
var undef = qs["undefinedstring"];

Regex test code

var search = window.getParameterByName("q");
var value = window.getParameterByName("value");
var undef = window.getParameterByName("undefinedstring");

Testing in Firefox 4.0 x86 on Windows Server 2008 R2 / 7 x64

Split method: 144,780 ±2.17% fastest
Regex method: 13,891 ±0.85% | 90% slower