Parsing Query String in node.js

Question

In this "Hello World" example:

// Load the http module to create an http server. var http = require('http');  // Configure our HTTP server to respond with Hello World to all requests. var server = http.createServer(function (request, response) {   response.writeHead(200, {"Content-Type": "text/plain"});   response.end("Hello World\n"); });  // Listen on port 8000, IP defaults to 127.0.0.1 server.listen(8000);  // Put a friendly message on the terminal console.log("Server running at http://127.0.0.1:8000/"); 

How can I get the parameters from the query string?

http://127.0.0.1:8000/status?name=ryan 

In the documentation, they mentioned:

node> require('url').parse('/status?name=ryan', true) { href: '/status?name=ryan' , search: '?name=ryan' , query: { name: 'ryan' } , pathname: '/status' } 

But I did not understand how to use it. Could anyone explain?

Answer 1

You can use the parse method from the URL module in the request callback.

var http = require('http'); var url = require('url');  // Configure our HTTP server to respond with Hello World to all requests. var server = http.createServer(function (request, response) {   var queryData = url.parse(request.url, true).query;   response.writeHead(200, {"Content-Type": "text/plain"});    if (queryData.name) {     // user told us their name in the GET request, ex: http://host:8000/?name=Tom     response.end('Hello ' + queryData.name + '\n');    } else {     response.end("Hello World\n");   } });  // Listen on port 8000, IP defaults to 127.0.0.1 server.listen(8000); 

I suggest you read the HTTP module documentation to get an idea of what you get in the createServer callback. You should also take a look at sites like http://howtonode.org/ and checkout the Express framework to get started with Node faster.