files/en-us/web/api/location/search/index.md
{{ApiRef("Location")}}
The search property of the {{domxref("Location")}} interface is a search string, also called a query string, that is a string containing a "?" followed by the parameters of the location's URL. If the URL does not have a search query, this property contains an empty string, "".
This property can be set to change the query string of the URL. When setting, a single "?" prefix is added to the provided value, if not already present. Setting it to "" removes the query string.
The query is {{Glossary("Percent-encoding", "percent-encoded")}} when setting but not percent-decoded when reading.
Modern browsers provide
URLSearchParams
and
URL.searchParams
to make it easy to parse out the parameters from the querystring.
See {{domxref("URL.search")}} for more information.
A string.
// Let an <a id="myAnchor" href="/en-US/docs/Location.search?q=123"> element be in the document
const anchor = document.getElementById("myAnchor");
const queryString = anchor.search; // Returns:'?q=123'
// Further parsing:
const params = new URLSearchParams(queryString);
const q = parseInt(params.get("q"), 10); // is the number 123
{{Specifications}}
{{Compat}}