JavaScript URL Decode function

Question

What's the best JavaScript URL decode utility? Encoding would be nice too and working well with jQuery is an added bonus.

Solution 1

I've used encodeURIComponent() and decodeURIComponent() too.

Solution 2

Here is a complete function (taken from PHPJS):

function urldecode(str) {
   return decodeURIComponent((str+'').replace(/\+/g, '%20'));
}

Solution 3

decodeURIComponent(mystring);

you can get passed parameters by using this bit of code:

//parse URL to get values: var i = getUrlVars()["i"];
function getUrlVars() {
    var vars = [], hash;
    var hashes = window.location.href.slice(window.location.href.indexOf('?') + 1).split('&');
    for (var i = 0; i < hashes.length; i++) {
        hash = hashes[i].split('=');
        vars.push(hash[0]);
        vars[hash[0]] = hash[1];
    }
    return vars;
}

Or this one-liner to get the parameters:

location.search.split("your_parameter=")[1]

Solution 4

Use this

unescape(str);

I'm not a great JS programmer, tried all, and this worked awesome!

Solution 5

//How decodeURIComponent Works

function proURIDecoder(val)
{
  val=val.replace(/\+/g, '%20');
  var str=val.split("%");
  var cval=str[0];
  for (var i=1;i<str.length;i++)
  {
    cval+=String.fromCharCode(parseInt(str[i].substring(0,2),16))+str[i].substring(2);
  }

  return cval;
}

document.write(proURIDecoder(window.location.href));

View more solutions

Comments

[Gumbo]

Did you check encodeURIComponent and decodeURIComponent?

[at.]

is that really the same thing?

[at.]

@Gumbo: the same thing as URL encoding and URL decoding - blooberry.com/indexdot/html/topics/urlencoding.htm

[at.]

thanks guys! looks like the right answer, but Gumbo answered this first.. I feel like he deserves the credit

[Máthé Endre-Botond]

+1: this is the true urldecode, handles the case of space being encoded as +, thanks a lot

[Steven Francolla]

This is an incomplete answer. See the urlDecode() implementation below by @anshuman.

[Scott Keck-Warren]

This is what I needed to use when the data was encoded with PHP's urlencode() function.

[MusikAnimal]

Nice but it didn't remove '+' signs. @anshuman's answer worked best for me

[Chris Moschini]

If I'm not mistaken, this is decoding + as %20, not as space - that's not really what you wanted here, is it? You'd want the space, not another version of an encoded character... no?

[Elyas Behroozizade]

@ChrisMoschini: No, this is correct because the replace occurs before the decode call.

[Chris Moschini]

@lfaraone I see - so the goal of that tidbit of code is to ensure plus signs come out as spaces in the output instead of being left be as plusses by decodeURIComponent.

[Dante Cullari]

Thank you so much!! This is a perfect way to handle strings in jquery which have been previously urlencoded with php, just what I needed!!

[Brad Koch]

Cool answer, but looks like it's obsoleted in favor of decodeURIComponent() due to poor support of non-ASCII characters.

[VoidKing]

This method is also better if the string was encoded with HttpServerUtility.UrlEncode (which encodes spaces as "+"s) instead of HttpServerUtility.UrlPathEncode (which encodes spaces as "%20") in C#.NET, as well.

[Octopus]

if, in PHP, you json_encode() a value and then put that in a cookie with setcookie(), you may need to do this before you JSON.parse() it. even though you didnt explicitly urlencode() it.

[mjs]

Doesn't work with spaces which are represented with ++++

[mjs]

Are the plus signes the only thing that needs to be replaced ?

[anshuman]

@momo Other things taken care by decodeURIComponent.

[Smile4ever]

Thank you, this worked for me. decodeURIComponent did not work for me (Malformed URI sequence).

[aloisdg]

You should use window.location.search instead.

[TheRealFakeNews]

@anshuman What if I need to decode what I encoded using urldecode? Will encodeURIComponent work just fine or will I need to alter the input as you did with urldecode?