Parse an URL in JavaScript

Question

How do I parse an URL with JavaScript (also with jQuery)?

For instance I have this in my string,

url = "http://example.com/form_image_edit.php?img_id=33"

I want to get the value of img_id

I know I can do this easily with PHP with parse_url(), but I want to know how it is possible with JavaScript.

Answer 1

You can use a trick of creating an a-element, add the url to it, and then use its Location object.

function parseUrl( url ) {
    var a = document.createElement('a');
    a.href = url;
    return a;
}

parseUrl('http://example.com/form_image_edit.php?img_id=33').search

Which will output: ?img_id=33

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You could also use php.js to get the parse_url function in JavaScript.

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Update (2012-07-05)

I would recommend using the excellent URI.js library if you need to do anything more than super simple URL handling.