parseUri

parseUri is a mighty but tiny JavaScript URI/URN/URL parser that splits any URI into its parts (all of which are optional). Its combination of accuracy, comprehensiveness, and brevity is unrivaled (1KB min/gzip, with no dependencies).

Breaking changes

Version 2 was a major, breaking change that probably requires updating URI part names in your code. See details in the release notes and compare results on the demo page. Version 3 was a small update published on npm as pure ESM.

Compared to the URL constructor

parseUri includes several advantages over the built-in URL:

• It gives you many additional properties (authority, userinfo, subdomain, domain, tld, resource, directory, filename, suffix) that aren’t available from URL.
• URL throws e.g. if not given a protocol, and in many other cases of valid (but not supported) and invalid URIs. parseUri makes a best case effort even with partial or invalid URIs and is extremely good with edge cases.
• URL’s rules don’t allow correctly handling many non-web protocols. For example, URL doesn’t throw on any of 'git://localhost:1234', 'ssh://[email protected]', or 't2ab:///path/entry', but it also doesn’t get their details correct since it treats everything after <non-web-protocol>: up to ? or # as part of the pathname.
• parseUri includes a “friendly” parsing mode (in addition to its default mode) that handles human-friendly URLs like 'example.com/file.html' as expected.
• parseUri supports providing a list of second-level domains that should be treated as part of the top-level domain (ex: co.uk).

Conversely, parseUri is single-purpose and doesn’t apply normalization.

The demo page allows easily comparing with URL’s results.

Results / URI parts

Returns an object with 20 URI parts as properties plus queryParams, a URLSearchParams object that includes methods get(key), getAll(key), etc.

Here’s an example of what each part contains:

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                                                  href                                                    │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                             origin                             │                resource                 │
├──────────┬─┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────┬───────┬──────────┤
│ protocol │ │                     authority                     │       pathname       │ query │ fragment │
│          │ ├─────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┼───────────┬──────────┤       │          │
│          │ │      userinfo       │            host             │ directory │ filename │       │          │
│          │ ├──────────┬──────────┼──────────────────────┬──────┤           ├─┬────────┤       │          │
│          │ │ username │ password │       hostname       │ port │           │ │ suffix │       │          │
│          │ │          │          ├───────────┬──────────┤      │           │ ├────────┤       │          │
│          │ │          │          │ subdomain │  domain  │      │           │ │        │       │          │
│          │ │          │          │           ├────┬─────┤      │           │ │        │       │          │
│          │ │          │          │           │    │ tld │      │           │ │        │       │          │
"  https   ://   user   :   pass   @ sub1.sub2 . dom.com  : 8080   /p/a/t/h/  a.html    ?  q=1  #   hash   "
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

If this chart doesn’t appear correctly, view it on GitHub.

parseUri additionally supports IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, URNs, and many edge cases not shown here. See the extensive tests.

Parsing modes

parseUri has two parsing modes: default and friendly. The default mode follows official URI rules. Friendly mode doesn’t require '<protocol>:', ':', or '//' to signal the start of an authority, which allows handling human-friendly URLs like 'example.com/file.html' as expected. This change has several effects:

• It allows starting a URI with an authority (as noted above).
• It precludes friendly mode from properly handling relative paths (that don’t start from root '/') such as 'dir/file.html'.
• Since the web protocols http, https, ws, wss, and ftp don’t require '//', this also means that friendly mode extends this behavior to non-web protocols.

Examples

let uri = parseUri('https://a.b.example.com:80/@user/a/my.img.jpg?q=x&q=#hash');
uri.protocol // → 'https'
uri.host // → 'a.b.example.com:80'
uri.hostname // → 'a.b.example.com'
uri.subdomain // → 'a.b'
uri.domain // → 'example.com'
uri.port // → '80'
uri.resource // → '/@user/a/my.img.jpg?q=x&q=#hash'
uri.pathname // → '/@user/a/my.img.jpg'
uri.directory // → '/@user/a/'
uri.filename // → 'my.img.jpg'
uri.suffix // → 'jpg'
uri.query // → 'q=x&q='
uri.fragment // → 'hash'
uri.queryParams.get('q') // → 'x'
uri.queryParams.getAll('q') // → ['x', '']
uri.queryParams.get('not-present') // → null
uri.queryParams.getAll('not-present') // → []
// Also available: href, origin, authority, userinfo, username, password, tld

// Relative path (not starting from root /)
uri = parseUri('dir/file.html?q=x');
uri.hostname // → ''
uri.directory // → 'dir/'
uri.filename // → 'file.html'
uri.query // → 'q=x'

// Friendly mode allows starting with an authority
uri = parseUri('example.com/file.html', 'friendly');
uri.hostname // → 'example.com'
uri.directory // → '/'
uri.filename // → 'file.html'

// IPv4 address
uri = parseUri('ssh://[email protected]');
uri.protocol // → 'ssh'
uri.username // → 'myid'
uri.hostname // → '192.168.1.101'
uri.domain // → ''

// IPv6 address
uri = parseUri('https://[2001:db8:85a3::7334]:80?q=x');
uri.hostname // → '[2001:db8:85a3::7334]'
uri.port // → '80'
uri.domain // → ''
uri.query // → 'q=x'

// Mailto
uri = parseUri('mailto:[email protected],[email protected]?subject=Hey&body=Sign%20me%20up!');
uri.protocol // → 'mailto'
uri.username // → ''
uri.hostname // → ''
uri.pathname // → '[email protected],[email protected]'
uri.query // → 'subject=Hey&body=Sign%20me%20up!'
uri.queryParams.get('body') // → 'Sign me up!'

// Mailto in friendly mode
uri = parseUri('mailto:[email protected]?subject=Hey', 'friendly');
uri.protocol // → 'mailto'
uri.username // → 'me'
uri.hostname // → 'my.com'
uri.pathname // → ''

/* Also supports e.g.:
- https://[2001:db8:85a3::7334%en1]/ipv6-with-zone-identifier
- git://localhost:1234
- file:///path/file
- tel:+1-800-555-1212
- urn:uuid:c5542ab6-3d96-403e-8e6b-b8bb52f48d9a?q=x
*/

Use the demo page to easily test and compare results.

Install

npm install parseuri

Use

import { parseUri, setTlds } from 'parseuri';

In browsers:

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/parseuri/dist/parseuri.min.js"></script>
<script>
  console.log(parseUri('https://example.com/'));
  // If needed, use `parseUri.setTlds`
</script>