HTMLHyperlinkElementUtils.search

The HTMLHyperlinkElementUtils.search property is a search string, also called a query string, that is USVString containing a '?' followed by the parameters of the URL.

Modern browsers provide URLSearchParams and URL.searchParams to make it easy to parse out the parameters from the querystring.

Syntax

string = object.search;
object.search = string;

Examples

// Let an <a id="myAnchor" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/HTMLHyperlinkElementUtils.search?q=123"> element be in the document
var anchor = document.getElementById("myAnchor");
var queryString = anchor.search; // Returns:'?q=123'
// Further parsing:
let params = new URLSearchParams(queryString.substring(1)); // substring(1) to drop the leading "?"
let q = parseInt(params.get("q")); // is the number 123

Specifications

Specification Status Comment
WHATWG HTML Living Standard
The definition of 'HTMLHyperlinkElementUtils.search' in that specification.
Living Standard Initial definition.

Browser compatibility

Feature Chrome Edge Firefox (Gecko) Internet Explorer Opera Safari
Basic support (Yes) [1] (Yes) 22 (22) [3][4] (Yes) [2] (Yes) [2] (Yes) [2]
Feature Android Webview Chrome for Android Edge Firefox Mobile (Gecko) IE Mobile Opera Mobile Safari Mobile
Basic support (Yes) [1] (Yes) [1] (Yes) 22.0 (22) [3][4] (Yes) [2] (Yes) [2] (Yes) [2]

[1] Starting in Chrome 52, this property was moved to URL

[2] Though not grouped in a single abstract interface, this method is directly available on the interfaces that implement it, if this interface is supported.

[3] From Gecko 22 to Gecko 44, this property was on the URLUtils mixin. It has been moved either on the HTMLHyperlinkElementUtils mixin, or directly on the interface.

[4] Before Firefox 53, the pathname and search HTMLHyperLinkElementUtils properties returned the wrong parts of the URL. For example, for a URL of http://z.com/x?a=true&b=false, pathname would return "/x?a=true&b=false" and search would return "", rather than "/x" and "?a=true&b=false" respectively. This has now been fixed.

See also

Document Tags and Contributors

 Last updated by: Jonathan_Watt,