Parsing Query String in node.js

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?

Solution

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.