• About
• Understanding URIs
• Documentation
• jQuery URI Plugin
• Author

I always want to shoot myself in the head when looking at code like the following:

var url = "http://example.org/foo?bar=baz",
    separator = url.indexOf('?') > -1 ? '&' : '?';

url += separator + encodeURIComponent("foo") + "=" + encodeURIComponent("bar");

I still can't believe javascript - the f**ing backbone-language of the web - doesn't offer an API for mutating URLs. Browsers (Firefox) don't expose the Location object (the structure behind window.location). Yes, one could think of decomposed IDL attributes as a native URL management library. But it relies on the DOM element <a>, it's slow and doesn't offer any convenience at all.

How about a nice, clean and simple API for mutating URIs:

var url = new URI("http://example.org/foo?bar=baz");
url.addQuery("foo", "bar");

URI.js is here to help with that.

// mutating URLs
URI("http://example.org/foo.html?hello=world")
    .username("rodneyrehm")
        // -> http://[email protected]/foo.html?hello=world
    .username("")
        // -> http://example.org/foo.html?hello=world
    .directory("bar")
        // -> http://example.org/bar/foo.html?hello=world
    .suffix("xml")
        // -> http://example.org/bar/foo.xml?hello=world
    .query("")
        // -> http://example.org/bar/foo.xml
    .tld("com")
        // -> http://example.com/bar/foo.xml
    .query({ foo: "bar", hello: ["world", "mars"] });
        // -> http://example.com/bar/foo.xml?foo=bar&hello=world&hello=mars

// cleaning things up
URI("?&foo=bar&&foo=bar&foo=baz&")
    .normalizeQuery();
        // -> ?foo=bar&foo=baz

// working with relative paths
URI("/foo/bar/baz.html")
    .relativeTo("/foo/bar/world.html");
        // -> ./baz.html

URI("/foo/bar/baz.html")
    .relativeTo("/foo/bar/sub/world.html")
        // -> ../baz.html
    .absoluteTo("/foo/bar/sub/world.html");
        // -> /foo/bar/baz.html

// URI Templates
URI.expand("/foo/{dir}/{file}", {
  dir: "bar",
  file: "world.html"
});
// -> /foo/bar/world.html

See the About Page and API Docs for more stuff.

I guess you'll manage to use the build tool or follow the instructions below to combine and minify the various files into URI.min.js - and I'm fairly certain you know how to <script src=".../URI.min.js"></script> that sucker, too.

Install with npm install URIjs or add "URIjs" to the dependencies in your package.json.

// load URI.js
var URI = require('URIjs');
// load an optional module (e.g. URITemplate)
var URITemplate = require('URIjs/src/URITemplate');

URI("/foo/bar/baz.html")
    .relativeTo("/foo/bar/sub/world.html")
// -> ../baz.html

Clone the URI.js repository or use a package manager to get URI.js into your project.

require.config({
    paths: {
        URIjs: 'where-you-put-uri.js/src'
    }
});

require(['URIjs/URI'], function(URI) {
    console.log("URI.js and dependencies: ", URI("//amazon.co.uk").is('sld') ? 'loaded' : 'failed');
});
require(['URIjs/URITemplate'], function(URITemplate) {
    console.log("URITemplate.js and dependencies: ", URITemplate._cache ? 'loaded' : 'failed');
});

See the build tool or use Google Closure Compiler:

// ==ClosureCompiler==
// @compilation_level SIMPLE_OPTIMIZATIONS
// @output_file_name URI.min.js
// @code_url http://medialize.github.com/URI.js/src/IPv6.js
// @code_url http://medialize.github.com/URI.js/src/punycode.js
// @code_url http://medialize.github.com/URI.js/src/SecondLevelDomains.js
// @code_url http://medialize.github.com/URI.js/src/URI.js
// @code_url http://medialize.github.com/URI.js/src/URITemplate.js
// ==/ClosureCompiler==

Documents specifying how URLs work:

• URL - Living Standard
• RFC 3986 - Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax
• RFC 3987 - Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRI)
• Punycode: A Bootstring encoding of Unicode for Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)
• application/x-www-form-urlencoded (Query String Parameters) and application/x-www-form-urlencoded encoding algorithm

Informal stuff

• Parsing URLs for Fun and Profit
• Naming URL components

How other environments do things

• Java URI Class
• Java Inet6Address Class
• Node.js URL API

Discussion on Hacker News

If you don't like URI.js, you may like one of these:

• The simple URL Mutation "Hack" (jsPerf comparison)
• URL.js
• furl (Python)
• mediawiki Uri (needs mw and jQuery)
• jurlp
• jsUri

• The simple URL Mutation "Hack" (jsPerf comparison)
• URI Parser
• jQuery-URL-Parser
• Google Closure Uri
• URI.js by Gary Court

• uri-templates by Marc Portier
• URI Template JS by Franz Antesberger
• Temple by Brett Stimmerman
• (jsperf comparison)

• TLD.js - second level domain names
• Public Suffic - second level domain names

• Rodney Rehm

• punycode.js - Mathias Bynens
• IPv6.js - Rich Brown - (rewrite of the original)

URI.js is published under the MIT license and GPL v3.

• fixing relativeTo() - (Issue #75)
• fixing normalizePath() to not prepend ./ to relative paths - (Issue #76)

• adding absoluteTo() to properly resolve relative scheme - (Issue #71)

• adding hasQuery() - (Issue #71)
• fixing URI property detection to return 'src' if none was detected (jquery.URI.js) - (Issue #69)

• fixing IE9 compatibility with location import: URI(location)
• fixing string character access for IE7 - (Issue #67), (Issue #68)

• adding .setQuery() - (Issue #64)
• adding callback argument to .query()
• adding jQuery 1.9.1 to the test suite

• fixing UglifyJS2 compression - (Issue #60, fidian)

• adding .fragmentPrefix() to configure prefix of fragmentURI and fragmentQuery extensions - (Issue #55)
• adding docs for .toString(), .valueOf() and .href() - (Issue #56)
• fixing .relativeTo() for descendants - (Issue #57)

• fixing build() to properly omit empty query and fragment (Issue #53)

• adding .resource() as compound of [path, query, fragment]
• adding jQuery 1.8.x compatibility for jQuery.URI.js (remaining backwards compatibility!)
• adding default ports for gopher, ws, wss
• adding .duplicateQueryParameters() to control if key=value duplicates have to be preserved or reduced (Issue #51)
• updating Punycode.js to version 1.1.1
• improving AMD/Node using UMD returnExports - (Issue #44, Issue #47)
• fixing .addQuery("empty") to properly add ?empty - (Issue #46)
• fixing parsing of badly formatted userinfo http://username:pass:word@hostname
• fixing parsing of Windows-Drive-Letter paths file://C:/WINDOWS/foo.txt
• fixing URI(location) to properly parse the URL - (Issue #52)
• fixing type error for fragment abuse demos - (Issue #50)
• adding documentation for various encode/decode functions
• adding some pointers on possible problems with URLs to About URIs
• adding tests for fragment abuse and splitting tests into separate scopes
• adding meta-data for Jam and Bower

Note: QUnit seems to be having some difficulties on IE8. While the jQuery-plugin tests fail, the plugin itself works. We're still trying to figure out what's making QUnit "lose its config state".

• fixing parsing of /wiki/Help:IPA - (Issue #49)

• fixing strictEncodeURIComponent() to properly encode * to %2A
• fixing IE9's incorrect report of img.href being available - (Issue #48)

• fixing SLD detection in .tld() - foot.se would detect t.se - (Issue #42)
• fixing .absoluteTo() to comply with RFC 3986 Section 5.2.2 - (Issue #41)
• fixing location not being available in non-browser environments like node.js (Issue #45 grimen)

• fixing .segment()'s append operation - (Issue #39)

• fixing URI() constructor passing of base - (Issue #33 LarryBattle)
• adding .segment() accessor - (Issue #34)
• upgrading URI.encode() to strict URI encoding according to RFC3986
• adding URI.encodeReserved() to exclude reserved characters (according to RFC3986) from being encoded
• adding URI Template (RFC 6570) support with URITemplate()

• fixing .absoluteTo() to join two relative paths properly - (Issue #29)
• adding .clone() to copy an URI instance

• .directory() now returns empty string if there is no directory
• fixing .absoluteTo() to join two relative paths properly - (Issue #29)

• fixing TypeError on .domain() with dot-less hostnames - (Issue #27)

• adding URN (javascript:, mailto:, ...) support
• adding .scheme() as alias of .protocol()
• adding .userinfo() to comply with terminology of RFC 3986
• adding jQuery Plugin src/jquery.URI.js
• fixing relative scheme URLs - (Issue #19 byroot)

• adding Second Level Domain (SLD) Support - (Issue #17)

• fixing global scope leakage - (Issue #15 mark-rushakoff)

• improving CommonJS compatibility - (Issue #14 FGRibreau)

• adding CommonJS compatibility - (Issue #11, Evangenieur)

• adding URI.iso8859() and URI.unicode() to switch base charsets - (Issue #10, mortenn)
• adding .iso8859() and .unicode() to convert an URI's escape encoding

• updating Punycode.js to version 0.3.0
• adding edge-case tests ("jim")
• fixing edge-cases in .protocol(), .port(), .subdomain(), .domain(), .tld(), .filename()
• fixing parsing of hostname in .hostname()

• adding .subdomain() convenience accessor
• improving internal deferred build handling
• fixing thrown Error for URI("http://example.org").query(true) - (Issue #6)
• adding examples for extending URI.js for fragment abuse, see src/URI.fragmentQuery.js and src/URI.fragmentURI.js - (Issue #2)

• adding .equals() for URL comparison
• fixing encoding/decoding for .pathname(), .directory(), .filename() and .suffix() according to RFC 3986 3.3
• fixing escape spaces in query strings with + according to application/x-www-form-urlencoded
• fixing to allow URI.buildQuery() to build duplicate key=value combinations
• fixing URI(string, string) constructor to conform with the specification
• adding .readable() for humanly readable representation of encoded URIs
• fixing bug where @ in pathname would be parsed as part of the authority

• adding URI.withinString()
• adding .normalizeProtocol() to lowercase protocols
• fixing .normalizeHostname() to lowercase hostnames
• fixing String.substr() to be replaced by String.substring() - (Issue #1)
• fixing parsing "?foo" to {foo: null} Algorithm for collecting URL parameters
• fixing building {foo: null, bar: ""} to "?foo&bar=" Algorithm for serializing URL parameters
• fixing RegExp escaping

• Initial URI.js