Get URL parameters & values with jQuery

In this post, I would like to share a little jQuery code snippet that makes getting URL parameters and their values more convenient.

Recently, while working on one of my projects, I needed to read and get parameter values from URL string of the current page that was constructed and sent by PHP script. I came across this short and sweet JavaScript code snippet by Roshambo that does just that.

// Read a page's GET URL variables and return them as an associative array.
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;
}

The function returns an array/object with your URL parameters and their values. For example, consider we have the following URL:

http://www.example.com/?me=myValue&name2=SomeOtherValue

Calling getUrlVars() function would return you the following array:

{
 "me" : "myValue",
 "name2" : "SomeOtherValue"
}

To get a value of first parameter you would do this:

var first = getUrlVars()["me"];
// To get the second parameter
var second = getUrlVars()["name2"];

To make the script syntax to look more jQuery like syntax I rewrote it as an extension for jQuery:

$.extend({
 getUrlVars: function(){
 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;
 },
 getUrlVar: function(name){
 return $.getUrlVars()[name];
 }
});

Now, if you include the above code in your javascript file, you can get URL parameter values in the following way:

// Get object of URL parameters
var allVars = $.getUrlVars();
// Getting URL var by its nam
var byName = $.getUrlVar('name');

That’s it! You might also find the following jQuery related articles on this blogs interesting:

1. Cross-domain AJAX querying with jQuery
2. Javascript for() loop vs jQuery .each() performance comparison
3. Create jQuery custom selectors with parameters
4. JavaScript / jQuery password generator