November 6, 1999 - Using Query Strings

Yehuda Shiran November 6, 1999
Using Query Strings
Tips: November 1999

Yehuda Shiran, Ph.D.
Doc JavaScript

The search property of the location object sets or retrieves the substring of the href property that follows the question mark. For example, when you search for the words "free javascript" on Altavista, you reach the following URL:

http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=q&kl=XX&stype=stext&q=free+javascript

The value of location.search is "?pg=q&kl=XX&stype=stext&q=free+javascript". Note that you can set the search property at any time, although it is safer to set the href property to change a location.

In order to retrieve the actual query string, we must get rid of the preceding question mark. The following expression chops the question mark:

var str = location.search.substring(1, location.search.length);