How to build a query string for a URL in C#?

Question

A common task when calling web resources from a code is building a query string to including all the necessary parameters. While by all means no rocket science, there are some nifty details you need to take care of like, appending an & if not the first parameter, encoding the parameters etc.

The code to do it is very simple, but a bit tedious:

StringBuilder SB = new StringBuilder();
if (NeedsToAddParameter A) 
{ 
  SB.Append("A="); SB.Append(HttpUtility.UrlEncode("TheValueOfA")); 
}

if (NeedsToAddParameter B) 
{
  if (SB.Length>0) SB.Append("&"); 
  SB.Append("B="); SB.Append(HttpUtility.UrlEncode("TheValueOfB")); }
}

This is such a common task one would expect a utility class to exist that makes it more elegant and readable. Scanning MSDN, I failed to find one - which brings me to the following question:

What is the most elegant clean way you know of doing the above?

Boaz

Answer 1

Untested, but I think something along these lines would work quite nicely

public class QueryString
{
    private Dictionary<string,string> _Params = new Dictionary<string,string>();

    public overide ToString()
    {
        List<string> returnParams = new List<string>();

        foreach (KeyValuePair param in _Params)
        {
            returnParams.Add(String.Format("{0}={1}", param.Key, param.Value));
        }

        // return String.Format("?{0}", String.Join("&", returnParams.ToArray())); 

        // credit annakata
        return "?" + String.Join("&", returnParams.ToArray());
    }

    public void Add(string key, string value)
    {
        _Params.Add(key, HttpUtility.UrlEncode(value));
    }
}

QueryString query = new QueryString();

query.Add("param1", "value1");
query.Add("param2", "value2");

return query.ToString();

Answer 2

If you look under the hood the QueryString property is a NameValueCollection. When I've done similar things I've usually been interested in serialising AND deserialising so my suggestion is to build a NameValueCollection up and then pass to:

private string ToQueryString(NameValueCollection nvc)
{
  return "?" + string.Join("&", Array.ConvertAll(nvc.AllKeys, key => string.Format("{0}={1}", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(key), HttpUtility.UrlEncode(nvc[key]))));
}

Possibly I could've formatted that better :)

I imagine there's a super elegant way to do this in LINQ too...

Answer 3

Maybe this QueryString Builder could help

Answer 4

EDIT - as pointed out in the comments, this is not the way to go.

There is such a class - the URI Class. "Provides an object representation of a uniform resource identifier (URI) and easy access to the parts of the URI." (Microsoft docs).

The following example creates an instance of the Uri class and uses it to create a WebRequest instance.

C# example

Uri siteUri = new Uri("http://www.contoso.com/");

WebRequest wr = WebRequest.Create(siteUri);

Check it out, there are lots of methods on this class.

Answer 5

A quick extension method based version:

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var parameters = new List<KeyValuePair<string, string>>
                             {
                                 new KeyValuePair<string, string>("A", "AValue"),
                                 new KeyValuePair<string, string>("B", "BValue")
                             };

        string output = "?" + string.Join("&", parameters.ConvertAll(param => param.ToQueryString()).ToArray());
    }
}

public static class KeyValueExtensions
{
    public static string ToQueryString(this KeyValuePair<string, string> obj)
    {
        return obj.Key + "=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(obj.Value);
    }
}

You could use a where clause to select which parameters get added to the string.

Answer 6

I answered a similar question a while ago. Basically, the best way would be to use the class HttpValueCollection, which ASP.NET's Request.QueryString property actually is, unfortunately it is internal in the .NET framework. You could use Reflector to grab it (and place it into your Utils class). This way you could manipulate the query string like a NameValueCollection, but with all the url encoding/decoding issues taken care for you.

HttpValueCollection extends NameValueCollection, and has a constructor that takes an encoded query string (ampersands and question marks included), and it overrides a ToString() method to later rebuild the query string from the underlying collection.

Example:

  var coll = new HttpValueCollection();

  coll["userId"] = "50";
  coll["paramA"] = "A";
  coll["paramB"] = "B";      

  string query = coll.ToString(true); // true means use urlencode

  Console.WriteLine(query); // prints: userId=50&paramA=A&paramB=B

Answer 7

How about creating extension methods that allow you to add the parameters in a fluent style like this?

string a = "http://www.somedomain.com/somepage.html"
    .AddQueryParam("A", "TheValueOfA")
    .AddQueryParam("B", "TheValueOfB")
    .AddQueryParam("Z", "TheValueOfZ");

string b = new StringBuilder("http://www.somedomain.com/anotherpage.html")
    .AddQueryParam("A", "TheValueOfA")
    .AddQueryParam("B", "TheValueOfB")
    .AddQueryParam("Z", "TheValueOfZ")
    .ToString();

Here's the overload that uses a string:

public static string AddQueryParam(
    this string source, string key, string value)
{
    string delim;
    if ((source == null) || !source.Contains("?"))
    {
        delim = "?";
    }
    else if (source.EndsWith("?") || source.EndsWith("&"))
    {
        delim = string.Empty;
    }
    else
    {
        delim = "&";
    }

    return source + delim + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(key)
        + "=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(value);
}

And here's the overload that uses a StringBuilder:

public static StringBuilder AddQueryParam(
    this StringBuilder source, string key, string value)
{
    bool hasQuery = false;
    for (int i = 0; i < source.Length; i++)
    {
        if (source[i] == '?')
        {
            hasQuery = true;
            break;
        }
    }

    string delim;
    if (!hasQuery)
    {
        delim = "?";
    }
    else if ((source[source.Length - 1] == '?')
        || (source[source.Length - 1] == '&'))
    {
        delim = string.Empty;
    }
    else
    {
        delim = "&";
    }

    return source.Append(delim).Append(HttpUtility.UrlEncode(key))
        .Append("=").Append(HttpUtility.UrlEncode(value));
}

Answer 8

Assuming that you want to reduce dependencies to other assemblies and to keep things simple, you can do:

var sb = new System.Text.StringBuilder();

sb.Append("a=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode("TheValueOfA") + "&");
sb.Append("b=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode("TheValueOfB") + "&");
sb.Append("c=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode("TheValueOfC") + "&");
sb.Append("d=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode("TheValueOfD") + "&");

sb.Remove(sb.Length-1, 1); // Remove the final '&'

string result = sb.ToString();

This works well with loops too. The final ampersand removal needs to go outside of the loop.

Note that the concatenation operator is used to improve readability. The cost of using it compared to the cost of using a StringBuilder is minimal (I think Jeff Atwood posted something on this topic).

Answer 9

I added the following method to my PageBase class.

protected void Redirect(string url)
    {
        Response.Redirect(url);
    }
protected void Redirect(string url, NameValueCollection querystrings)
    {
        StringBuilder redirectUrl = new StringBuilder(url);

        if (querystrings != null)
        {
            for (int index = 0; index < querystrings.Count; index++)
            {
                if (index == 0)
                {
                    redirectUrl.Append("?");
                }

                redirectUrl.Append(querystrings.Keys[index]);
                redirectUrl.Append("=");
                redirectUrl.Append(HttpUtility.UrlEncode(querystrings[index]));

                if (index < querystrings.Count - 1)
                {
                    redirectUrl.Append("&");
                }
            }
        }

        this.Redirect(redirectUrl.ToString());
    }

To call:

NameValueCollection querystrings = new NameValueCollection();    
querystrings.Add("language", "en");
querystrings.Add("id", "134");
this.Redirect("http://www.mypage.com", querystrings);

Answer 10

You can create a new writeable instance of HttpValueCollection by calling System.Web.HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(string.Empty), and then use it as any NameValueCollection. Once you have added the values you want, you can call ToString on the collection to get a query string, as follows:

NameValueCollection queryString = System.Web.HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(string.Empty);

queryString["key1"] = "value1";
queryString["key2"] = "value2";

return queryString.ToString(); // Returns "key1=value1&key2=value2", all URL-encoded

The HttpValueCollection is internal and so you cannot directly construct an instance. However, once you obtain an instance you can use it like any other NameValueCollection. Since the actual object you are working with is an HttpValueCollection, calling ToString method will call the overridden method on HttpValueCollection, which formats the collection as a URL-encoded query string.

After searching SO and the web for an answer to a similar issue, this is the most simple solution I could find.

Answer 11

Here is an implementation which uses very basic language features. It's part of a class which we have to port and maintain in Objective C so we choose to have more lines of code but easier to port and understand by a programmer that isn't very familiar with CV#$.

        /// <summary>
        /// Builds a complete http url with query strings.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="pHostname"></param>
        /// <param name="pPort"></param>
        /// <param name="pPage">ex "/index.html" or index.html</param>
        /// <param name="pGetParams">a Dictionary<string,string> collection containing the key value pairs.  Pass null if there are none.</param>
        /// <returns>a string of the form: http://[pHostname]:[pPort/[pPage]?key1=val1&amp;key2=val2...&lt;/returns&gt;

  static public string buildURL(string pHostname, int pPort, string pPage, Dictionary<string,string> pGetParams)
        {
            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(200);
            sb.Append("http://");
            sb.Append(pHostname);
            if( pPort != 80 ) {
                sb.Append(pPort);
            }
            // Allows page param to be passed in with or without leading slash.
            if( !pPage.StartsWith("/") ) {
                sb.Append("/");
            }
            sb.Append(pPage);

            if (pGetParams != null && pGetParams.Count > 0)
            {
                sb.Append("?");
                foreach (KeyValuePair<string, string> kvp in pGetParams)
                {
                    sb.Append(kvp.Key);
                    sb.Append("=");
                    sb.Append( System.Web.HttpUtility.UrlEncode(kvp.Value) );
                    sb.Append("&");
                }
                sb.Remove(sb.Length - 1, 1); // Remove the final '&'
            }
            return sb.ToString();
        }

Answer 12

public string UrlQueryStr(object data)
{
    if (data == null)
        return string.Empty;

    object val;
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

    foreach (PropertyDescriptor prop in TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(data))
    {
        if ((val = prop.GetValue(data)) != null)
        {
            sb.AppendFormat("{0}{1}={2}", sb.Length == 0 ? '?' : '&',
                HttpUtility.UrlEncode(prop.Name), HttpUtility.UrlEncode(val.ToString()));
        }
    }
    return sb.ToString();
}