Parse a URL query string to get query parameters in Python

# Parse a URL query string to get query parameters in Python

To parse a URL query string and get query parameters:

Import the urlparse and parse_qs methods from the urllib.parse module.
Use the urlparse method to get a parse result object.
Pass the object to the parse_qs method to get a dictionary of the query params.

main.py

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from urllib.parse import urlparse, parse_qs

url = 'https://bobbyhadz.com/store?page=10&limit=15&price=ASC'
parse_result = urlparse(url)

# 👇️ "page=10&limit=15&price=ASC"
print(parse_result)

dict_result = parse_qs(parse_result.query)

# 👇️ {'page': ['10'], 'limit': ['15'], 'price': ['ASC']}
print(dict_result)

print(dict_result['page'][0])  # 👉️ '10'
print(dict_result['price'][0])  # 👉️ 'ASC'

parse url query string to get query params

The code for this article is available on GitHub

We used the urlparse() and parse_qs() methods from the urllib.parse module to parse a URL query string.

The urlparse method takes a URL and parses it into six components.

main.py

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from urllib.parse import urlparse, parse_qs

url = 'https://bobbyhadz.com/store?page=10&limit=15&price=ASC'
parse_result = urlparse(url)

# 👇️ ParseResult(scheme='https', netloc='bobbyhadz.com', path='/store', params='', query='page=10&limit=15&price=ASC', fragment='')
print(parse_result)

# 👇️ page=10&limit=15&price=ASC
print(parse_result.query)

We can access the query attribute on the object to get the query string.

Notice that other components like path and fragment are also available.

main.py

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from urllib.parse import urlparse, parse_qs

url = 'https://bobbyhadz.com/store?page=10&limit=15&price=ASC#my-fragment'
parse_result = urlparse(url)


# 👇️ page=10&limit=15&price=ASC
print(parse_result.query)

# 👇️ /store
print(parse_result.path)

# 👇️ my-fragment
print(parse_result.fragment)

# Getting a dictionary containing the URL's query parameters

After we parse the URL and get the query string, we can pass the string to the parse_qs method to get a dictionary containing the URL's query parameters.

main.py

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from urllib.parse import urlparse, parse_qs

url = 'https://bobbyhadz.com/store?page=10&limit=15&price=ASC#my-fragment'
parse_result = urlparse(url)


# 👇️ "page=10&limit=15&price=ASC"
print(parse_result)

dict_result = parse_qs(parse_result.query)

# 👇️ {'page': ['10'], 'limit': ['15'], 'price': ['ASC']}
print(dict_result)

print(dict_result['page'][0])  # 👉️ '10'
print(dict_result['price'][0])  # 👉️ 'ASC'

getting dictionary containing the url query parameters

The code for this article is available on GitHub

The parse_qs() method parses the given query string and returns the results as a dictionary.

The dictionary keys are the names of the query parameters and the values are lists that store the values for each parameter.

You first have to access a key in the dictionary and then have to access the list item at the specific index (most likely 0 unless you have a query param with multiple values).

# Keeping query parameters without values in the results

If your URL has query parameters without values that you want to keep in the results, set the keep_blank_values argument to True when calling parse_qs.

main.py

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from urllib.parse import urlparse, parse_qs

url = 'https://bobbyhadz.com/store?page=10&limit=15&price'
parse_result = urlparse(url)


print(parse_result)

dict_result = parse_qs(parse_result.query, keep_blank_values=True)

# 👇️ {'page': ['10'], 'limit': ['15'], 'price': ['']}
print(dict_result)

print(dict_result['page'][0])  # 👉️ '10'
print(dict_result['price'][0])  # 👉️ ""

keep query parameters without values in the results

The code for this article is available on GitHub

Even though the price query parameter doesn't have a value specified, it is still included in the dictionary if keep_blank_values is set to True.

# Additional Resources

You can learn more about the related topics by checking out the following tutorials:

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Parse a URL query string to get query parameters in Python