This seems to be the best solution as it takes multiple parameters of the same name into consideration.
function paramsToJSON(str) {
var pairs = str.split('&');
var result = {};
pairs.forEach(function(pair) {
pair = pair.split('=');
var name = pair[0]
var value = pair[1]
if( name.length )
if (result[name] !== undefined) {
if (!result[name].push) {
result[name] = [result[name]];
}
result[name].push(value || '');
} else {
result[name] = value || '';
}
});
return( result );
}
<a href="index.html?x=1&x=2&x=3&y=blah">something</a>
paramsToJSON("x=1&x=2&x=3&y=blah");
console yields => {x: Array[3], y: "blah"} where x is an array as is proper JSON
I later decided to convert it to a jQuery plugin too...
$.fn.serializeURLParams = function() {
var result = {};
if( !this.is("a") || this.attr("href").indexOf("?") == -1 )
return( result );
var pairs = this.attr("href").split("?")[1].split('&');
pairs.forEach(function(pair) {
pair = pair.split('=');
var name = decodeURI(pair[0])
var value = decodeURI(pair[1])
if( name.length )
if (result[name] !== undefined) {
if (!result[name].push) {
result[name] = [result[name]];
}
result[name].push(value || '');
} else {
result[name] = value || '';
}
});
return( result )
}
<a href="index.html?x=1&x=2&x=3&y=blah">something</a>
$("a").serializeURLParams();
console yields => {x: Array[3], y: "blah"} where x is an array as is proper JSON
Now, the first will accept the parameters only but the jQuery plugin will take the whole url and return the serialized parameters.