Parsing URLs with the DOM

 

This short function returns an object containing all possible information you would want to retrieve from a URL:

parseURL

// This function creates a new anchor element and uses location

// properties (inherent) to get the desired URL data. Some String

// operations are used (to normalize results across browsers).

function parseURL ( url ) {

var a = document. createElement ( 'a' ) ;
a.href = url ;
return { 
source : url , 
protocol : a. protocol . replace ( ':' , '' ) , 
host : a. hostname , 
port : a. port , 
query : a. search , 
params : ( function ( ) { 
var ret = { } , 
seg = a. search . replace ( /^/?/ , '' ) . split ( '&' ) , 
len = seg. length , i = 0 , s ; 
for ( ; i < len ; i ++ ) { 
if ( ! seg [ i ] ) { continue ; } 
s = seg [ i ] . split ( '=' ) ; 
ret [ s [ 0 ] ] = s [ 1 ] ; 
} 
return ret ; 
} ) ( ) , 
file : ( a. pathname . match ( ///([^//?#]+)$/i ) || [ , '' ] ) [ 1 ] , 
hash : a. hash . replace ( '#' , '' ) , 
path : a. pathname . replace ( /^([^//])/ , '/$1' ) , 
relative : ( a. href . match ( /tps?:////[^//]+(.+)/ ) || [ , '' ] ) [ 1 ] , 
segments : a. pathname . replace ( /^/// , '' ) . split ( '/' ) 
} ; 
} 

Usage

var myURL = parseURL ( 'http://abc.com:8080/dir/index.html?id=255&m=hello#top' ) ;

myURL. file ; // = 'index.html'
myURL. hash ; // = 'top' 
myURL. host ; // = 'abc.com' 
myURL. query ; // = '?id=255&m=hello' 
myURL. params ; // = Object = { id: 255, m: hello } 
myURL. path ; // = '/dir/index.html' 
myURL. segments ; // = Array = ['dir', 'index.html'] 
myURL. port ; // = '8080' myURL. protocol ; // = 'http' 
myURL. source ; // = 'http://abc.com:8080/dir/index.html?id=255&m=hello#top'