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.

Did you check encodeURIComponent and decodeURIComponent? — Gumbo
– Gumbo, Commented Nov 27, 2010 at 17:31
@Gumbo: the same thing as URL encoding and URL decoding - blooberry.com/indexdot/html/topics/urlencoding.htm — at.
– at., Commented Nov 27, 2010 at 17:46

Matt · Accepted Answer · 2011-10-18 08:19:11Z

239

Here is a complete function (taken from PHPJS):

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

edited Oct 18, 2011 at 8:19

Matt

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answered Dec 16, 2010 at 8:03

anshuman

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11 Comments

Máthé Endre-Botond Over a year ago

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

Scott Keck-Warren Over a year ago

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

Chris Moschini Over a year ago

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?

lfaraone Over a year ago

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

Dante Cullari Over a year ago

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!!

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TJL · Accepted Answer · 2013-10-24 12:49:44Z

220

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

edited Oct 24, 2013 at 12:49

TJL

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answered Nov 27, 2010 at 17:34

Geoff

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4 Comments

at. Over a year ago

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

Steven Francolla Over a year ago

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

MusikAnimal Over a year ago

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

mjs Over a year ago

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

nithinreddy · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-13 12:51:09Z

9

Use this

unescape(str);

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

answered Feb 13, 2013 at 12:51

nithinreddy

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1 Comment

Brad Koch Over a year ago

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

Etienne Dupuis · Accepted Answer · 2016-11-15 19:12:25Z

9

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]

edited Nov 15, 2016 at 19:12

answered Apr 19, 2011 at 18:12

Etienne Dupuis

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1 Comment

aloisdg Over a year ago

You should use window.location.search instead.

Dennis Hackethal · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-25 18:56:58Z

3

//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));

edited Mar 25, 2013 at 18:56

Dennis Hackethal

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answered Jan 11, 2013 at 6:40

Irfan M

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1 Comment

Smile4ever Over a year ago

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

Brent Self · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-29 16:39:19Z

2

If you are responsible for encoding the data in PHP using urlencode, PHP's rawurlencode works with JavaScript's decodeURIComponent without needing to replace the + character.

answered Apr 29, 2014 at 16:39

Brent Self

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Comments

user3572058 · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-26 13:29:56Z

0

Here's what I used:

In JavaScript:

var url = "http://www.mynewsfeed.com/articles/index.php?id=17";
var encoded_url = encodeURIComponent(url);

var decoded_url = decodeURIComponent(encoded_url);

In PHP:

$url = "http://www.mynewsfeed.com/articles/index.php?id=17";
$encoded_url = url_encode(url);

$decoded_url = url_decode($encoded_url);

You can also try it online here: http://www.mynewsfeed.x10.mx/articles/index.php?id=17

edited Jul 26, 2015 at 13:29

answered Jul 15, 2015 at 13:03

user3572058

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Comments

CertainPerformance · Accepted Answer · 2018-08-04 06:13:19Z

0

var uri = "my test.asp?name=ståle&car=saab";
console.log(encodeURI(uri));

edited Aug 4, 2018 at 6:13

CertainPerformance

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answered Aug 4, 2018 at 6:09

methodpool.io

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Comments

Community · Accepted Answer · 2021-10-07 13:31:19Z

decodeURIComponent() is fine, but you never want ot use encodeURIComponent() directly. This fails to escape reserved characters like *, !, ', (, and ). Check out RFC3986, where this is defined, for more info on that. The Mozilla Developer Network documentation gives both a good explanation and a solution. Explanation...

To be more stringent in adhering to RFC 3986 (which reserves !, ', (, ), and *), even though these characters have no formalized URI delimiting uses, the following can be safely used:

Solution...

function fixedEncodeURIComponent(str) {
  return encodeURIComponent(str).replace(/[!'()*]/g, function(c) {
    return '%' + c.charCodeAt(0).toString(16);
  });
}

In case you're not sure, check out a good, working demo at JSBin.com. Compare this with a bad, working demo at JSBin.com using encodeURIComponent() directly.

Good code results:

thing%2athing%20thing%21

Bad code results from encodeURIComponent():

thing*thing%20thing!

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