How can I replace %2C with a <comma> in javascript?

Question

 #&q=car&category=Car%20Audio%2CAccessories&brand=

I borrowed a this function from a previous question asked on SO:

function insertParam(key, value)
{
key = escape(key); value = escape(value);

var kvp = document.location.hash.substr(1).split('&');

var i=kvp.length; var x; while(i--) 
{
    x = kvp[i].split('=');

    if (x[0]==key)
    {
            x[1] = value;
            kvp[i] = x.join('=');
            break;
    }
}

if(i<0) {kvp[kvp.length] = [key,value].join('=');}

//this will reload the page, it's likely better to store this until finished

document.location.hash = kvp.join('&'); 
}

I use it like this:

    insertParam("category",xy);
    insertParam("brand",zy);

My problem is it is decoding comma's to %2C. I know I can handle the characters on the server side, but how can I make it look pretty with javascript? By pretty I mean replace %2c with a comma.

Answer 1

I do not know why in the previous answer that was striked out, but the answer was correct.

alert(decodeURIComponent('%2C'));

So, you break your query strings into elements, splitting by & symbol. Than you split the results by = symbol and apply decodeURIComponent on both name and the value.

ps: key = escape(key); value = escape(value); you should not use escape here (it is different for different browsers. and by 'different' I meant IE). Use encodeURIComponent.

pps: because they either encode commas or don't encode &=???

alert(encodeURIComponent('&=,'));

outputs %26%3D%2C

Answer 2

This worked for me for undoing encodeURIComponent() on URIs that contain commas:

.replace(/%2C/g,",")