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URL: search property - Web APIs | MDN

Value

A string.

Examples

Basic usage

js

const url = new URL(
  "https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/URL/search?q=123",
);
console.log(url.search); // Logs "?q=123"

Interaction with searchParams

The URL.searchParams property exposes the search string as a URLSearchParams object. When updating this URLSearchParams, the URL's search is updated with its serialization. However, URL.search encodes a subset of characters that URLSearchParams does, and encodes spaces as %20 instead of +. This may cause some surprising interactions—if you update searchParams, even with the same values, the URL may be serialized differently.

js

const url = new URL("https://example.com/?a=b ~");
console.log(url.href); // "https://example.com/?a=b%20~"
console.log(url.searchParams.toString()); // "a=b+%7E"
// This should be a no-op, but it changes the URL's query to the
// serialization of its searchParams
url.searchParams.sort();
console.log(url.href); // "https://example.com/?a=b+%7E"

const url2 = new URL("https://example.com?search=1234&param=my%20param");
console.log(url2.search); // "?search=1234&param=my%20param"
url2.searchParams.delete("search");
console.log(url2.search); // "?param=my+param"

Specifications

Specification
URL
# dom-url-search

Browser compatibility

See also

  • The URL interface it belongs to.

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