jQuery code snippet to get the dynamic variables stored in the url as parameters and store them as JavaScript variables ready for use with your scripts:

$.urlParam = function(name){
    var results = new RegExp('[\?&]' + name + '=([^&#]*)').exec(window.location.href);
    if (results==null){
       return null;
    }
    else{
       return results[1] || 0;
    }
}

example.com?param1=name&param2=&id=6

$.urlParam('param1'); // name
$.urlParam('id');        // 6
$.urlParam('param2');   // null

example params with spaces

http://www.jquery4u.com?city=Gold Coast
console.log($.urlParam('city'));  
//output: Gold%20Coast



console.log(decodeURIComponent($.urlParam('city'))); 
//output: Gold Coast

May be its too late. But this method is very easy and simple

<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.url.js"></script>

<!-- URL:  www.example.com/correct/?message=done&year=1990 -->

<script type="text/javascript">
$(function(){
    $.url.attr('protocol')  // --> Protocol: "http"
    $.url.attr('path')      // --> host: "www.example.com"
    $.url.attr('query')         // --> path: "/correct/"
    $.url.attr('message')       // --> query: "done"
    $.url.attr('year')      // --> query: "1990"
});

UPDATE
Requires the url plugin : plugins.jquery.com/url
Thanks -Ripounet

I always stick this as one line. Now params has the vars:

var params={};window.location.search.replace(/[?&]+([^=&]+)=([^&]*)/gi,function(str,key,value){params[key] = value;});

multi-lined:

var params={};
window.location.search
  .replace(/[?&]+([^=&]+)=([^&]*)/gi, function(str,key,value) {
    params[key] = value;
  }
);

Or you can use this neat little function, because why overcomplicated solutions?

function getQueryParam(param) {
    location.search.substr(1)
        .split("&")
        .some(function(item) { // returns first occurence and stops
            return item.split("=")[0] == param && (param = item.split("=")[1])
        })
    return param
}

which looks even better when simplified and onelined:

tl;dr one-line solution

var queryDict = {};
location.search.substr(1).split("&").forEach(function(item) {queryDict[item.split("=")[0]] = item.split("=")[1]})

result:
queryDict['sent'] // undefined or 'value'

But what if you have got encoded characters or multivalued keys?

You better see this answer: How can I get query string values in JavaScript?

Sneak peak

"?a=1&b=2&c=3&d&e&a=5&a=t%20e%20x%20t&e=http%3A%2F%2Fw3schools.com%2Fmy%20test.asp%3Fname%3Dståle%26car%3Dsaab"
> queryDict
a: ["1", "5", "t e x t"]
b: ["2"]
c: ["3"]
d: [undefined]
e: [undefined, "http://w3schools.com/my test.asp?name=ståle&car=saab"]

> queryDict["a"][1] // "5"
> queryDict.a[1] // "5"

Perhaps you might want to give Dentist JS a look? (disclaimer: I wrote the code)

code:

document.URL == "http://helloworld.com/quotes?id=1337&author=kelvin&message=hello"
var currentURL = document.URL;
var params = currentURL.extract();
console.log(params.id); // 1337
console.log(params.author) // "kelvin"
console.log(params.message) // "hello"

with Dentist JS, you can basically call the extract() function on all strings (e.g., document.URL.extract() ) and you get back a HashMap of all parameters found. It's also customizable to deal with delimiters and all.

Minified version < 1kb

There's this great library: https://github.com/allmarkedup/purl

which allows you to do simply

url = 'http://example.com?sent=yes';
sent = $.url(url).param('sent');
if (typeof sent != 'undefined') { // sent exists
   if (sent == 'yes') { // sent is equal to yes
     // ...
   }
}

The example is assuming you're using jQuery. You could also use it just as plain javascript, the syntax would then be a little different.

Try this working demo http://jsfiddle.net/xy7cX/

API:

• inArray : http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.inArray/

This should help :)

code

var url = "http://myurl.com?sent=yes"

var pieces = url.split("?");
alert(pieces[1] + " ===== " + $.inArray("sent=yes", pieces));

I hope this will help.

 <script type="text/javascript">
   function getParameters() {
     var searchString = window.location.search.substring(1),
       params = searchString.split("&"),
       hash = {};

     if (searchString == "") return {};
     for (var i = 0; i < params.length; i++) {
       var val = params[i].split("=");
       hash[unescape(val[0])] = unescape(val[1]);
     }

     return hash;
   }

    $(window).load(function() {
      var param = getParameters();
      if (typeof param.sent !== "undefined") {
        // Do something.
      }
    });
</script>

This will give you a nice object to work with

    function queryParameters () {
        var result = {};

        var params = window.location.search.split(/\?|\&/);

        params.forEach( function(it) {
            if (it) {
                var param = it.split("=");
                result[param[0]] = param[1];
            }
        });

        return result;
    }

And then;

    if (queryParameters().sent === 'yes') { .....

This might be overkill, but there is a pretty popular library now available for parsing URIs, called URI.js.

Example

var uri = "http://example.org/foo.html?technology=jquery&technology=css&blog=stackoverflow";
var components = URI.parse(uri);
var query = URI.parseQuery(components['query']);
document.getElementById("result").innerHTML = "URI = " + uri;
document.getElementById("result").innerHTML += "<br>technology = " + query['technology'];

// If you look in your console, you will see that this library generates a JS array for multi-valued queries!
console.log(query['technology']);
console.log(query['blog']);

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/URI.js/1.17.0/URI.min.js"></script>

<span id="result"></span>

$.urlParam = function(name) {
  var results = new RegExp('[\?&]' + name + '=([^&#]*)').exec(window.location.href);
  return results[1] || 0;
}

Coffeescript version of Sameer's answer

getUrlParameter = (sParam) ->
  sPageURL = window.location.search.substring(1)
  sURLVariables = sPageURL.split('&')
  i = 0
  while i < sURLVariables.length
    sParameterName = sURLVariables[i].split('=')
    if sParameterName[0] == sParam
      return sParameterName[1]
    i++

use this

$.urlParam = function(name) {
  var results = new RegExp('[\?&]' + name + '=([^&#]*)').exec(window.location.href);
  return results[1] || 0;
}

A slight improvement to Sameer's answer, cache params into closure to avoid parsing and looping through all parameters each time calling

var getURLParam = (function() {
    var paramStr = decodeURIComponent(window.location.search).substring(1);
    var paramSegs = paramStr.split('&');
    var params = [];
    for(var i = 0; i < paramSegs.length; i++) {
        var paramSeg = paramSegs[i].split('=');
        params[paramSeg[0]] = paramSeg[1];
    }
    console.log(params);
    return function(key) {
        return params[key];
    }
})();

I use this and it works. http://codesheet.org/codesheet/NF246Tzs

function getUrlVars() {
    var vars = {};
    var parts = window.location.href.replace(/[?&]+([^=&]+)=([^&]*)/gi, function(m,key,value) {
    vars[key] = value;
    });
return vars;
}


var first = getUrlVars()["id"];