Ninedays Blog

Putting it All Together

It would be silly to have two entirely separate functions: one to deal with strings and one to deal with arrays, so I bundled it up into one easy function for y'all.

function getMixedQueryValue( name ) {
    if(name.indexOf('[]') > 0){
        name = name.replace(/[\[]/,"\\[").replace(/[\]]/,"\\]");
        var regex = new RegExp( "[\?&]"+name+"=([^&#]*)", 'gi' );
        var matches = window.location.href.match(regex);
        var values = new Array();
        for (var i=0; i < matches.length; i++) {
            var value = matches[i].split("=");
            values[i] = value[1];
        }
        return values;
    } else {
        var regex = new RegExp( "[\?&]"+name+"=([^&#]*)" );
        var results = regex.exec( window.location.href );
        if( results == null )
            return "";
        else
            return results[1];
    }
}

Which can be easily called like this then just set the cookies and you'll be on your way.

var setting = getMixedQueryValue('setting');
var districtsArr = getMixedQueryValue('district[]');

// URL:
// index.html?district[]=east&district[]=west&code=from google rep

Hide the Query String Once the Cookie is Set

One more special addition. Maybe you don't want your visitor to see the query string after they launch the page. Maybe you want your process to follow:

1. Load page with query string
2. Retrieve all values
3. Set all values as cookies
4. Redirect the page without appended query string

That's easy peasy, though I'm not gonna walk through it, you should catch the drift.

var setting = getMixedQueryValue('setting');
var districtsArr = getMixedQueryValue('district[]');
if(setting){
    setCookie('setting',setting,'','/');
}
if(districtsArr){
    setCookie('districts',districtsArr.join('|'),'','/');
}
if(getCookie('setting') && getCookie('districts')){
    window.location = window.location.href.split('?')[0];
}   

Magnificent!

Resources

• Regular Expressions and Strings in JavaScript
• Mozilla Developer Reference: RegExp Object