Setting query string using Fetch GET request

Question

I'm trying to use the new Fetch API:

I am making a GET request like this:

var request = new Request({
  url: 'http://myapi.com/orders',
  method: 'GET'
});
fetch(request);

However, I'm unsure how to add a query string to the GET request. Ideally, I want to be able to make a GET request to a URL like:

'http://myapi.com/orders?order_id=1'

In jQuery I could do this by passing {order_id: 1} as the data parameter of $.ajax(). Is there an equivalent way to do that with the new Fetch API?

Answer 1

A concise, modern approach:

fetch('https://example.com?' + new URLSearchParams({
    foo: 'value',
    bar: 2,
}).toString())

How it works: URLSearchParams toString() method will convert the URLSearchParams instance into a string representation, which happens to be a properly encoded query string.

It is also legal to leave out the .toString() call like so: fetch('https://...' + new URLSearchParams(...)). JavaScript automatically calls .toString() when an object is concatenated with a string. This does require future code readers to have a deeper understanding of the language to understand your code.

A complete example of a fetch request with query parameters:

// Real example you can copy-paste and play with.
// jsonplaceholder.typicode.com provides a dummy rest-api
// for this sort of purpose.
async function doAsyncTask() {
  const url = (
    'https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/comments?' +
    new URLSearchParams({ postId: 1 }).toString()
  );

  const result = await fetch(url)
    .then(response => response.json());

  console.log('Fetched from: ' + url);
  console.log(result);
}

doAsyncTask();

---

If you are using/supporting...

• IE: Internet Explorer does not provide native support for URLSearchParams or fetch, but there are polyfills available.

• Node: As of Node 18 there is native support for the fetch API (in version 17.5 it was behind the --experimental-fetch flag). In older versions, you can add the fetch API through a package like node-fetch. URLSearchParams comes with Node, and can be found as a global object since version 10. In older version you can find it at require('url').URLSearchParams.

• TypeScript: The values provided to URLSearchParams will be auto-coerced into a string, which is why TypeScript's definition for URLSearchParams requires you to provide all values as strings. Those who don't use TypeScript may be comfortable providing other value types to this function if they feel the coercion behavior is intuitive. For examples, numbers will behave exactly as you would expect, while the way arrays get implicitly coerced may cause confusion to future readers.

• TypeScript v4 or older with Node: Older versions of TypeScript did not offer type definitions for the global URLSearchParams in the Node environment. The simplest workaround is to just import it from the url module. This later got resolved at some point during v4 (I'm not sure what the exact version is that fixes this). See this issue for more info.

Answer 2

Update March 2017:

URL.searchParams support has officially landed in Chrome 51, but other browsers still require a polyfill.

---

The official way to work with query parameters is just to add them onto the URL. From the spec, this is an example:

var url = new URL("https://geo.example.org/api"),
    params = {lat:35.696233, long:139.570431}
Object.keys(params).forEach(key => url.searchParams.append(key, params[key]))
fetch(url).then(/* … */)

However, I'm not sure Chrome supports the searchParams property of a URL (at the time of writing) so you might want to either use a third party library or roll-your-own solution.

Update April 2018:

With the use of URLSearchParams constructor you could assign a 2D array or a object and just assign that to the url.search instead of looping over all keys and append them

var url = new URL('https://sl.se')

var params = {lat:35.696233, long:139.570431} // or:
var params = [['lat', '35.696233'], ['long', '139.570431']]

url.search = new URLSearchParams(params).toString();

fetch(url)

Sidenote: URLSearchParams is also available in NodeJS

const { URL, URLSearchParams } = require('url');

Answer 3

let params = {
  "param1": "value1",
  "param2": "value2"
};

let query = Object.keys(params)
             .map(k => encodeURIComponent(k) + '=' + encodeURIComponent(params[k]))
             .join('&');

let url = 'https://example.com/search?' + query;

fetch(url)
  .then(data => data.text())
  .then((text) => {
    console.log('request succeeded with JSON response', text)
  }).catch(function (error) {
    console.log('request failed', error)
  });

Answer 4

As already answered, this is per spec not possible with the fetch-API, yet. But I have to note:

If you are on node, there's the querystring package. It can stringify/parse objects/querystrings:

var querystring = require('querystring')
var data = { key: 'value' }
querystring.stringify(data) // => 'key=value'

...then just append it to the url to request.

---

However, the problem with the above is, that you always have to prepend a question mark (?). So, another way is to use the parse method from nodes url package and do it as follows:

var url = require('url')
var data = { key: 'value' }
url.format({ query: data }) // => '?key=value'

See query at https://nodejs.org/api/url.html#url_url_format_urlobj

This is possible, as it does internally just this:

search = obj.search || (
    obj.query && ('?' + (
        typeof(obj.query) === 'object' ?
        querystring.stringify(obj.query) :
        String(obj.query)
    ))
) || ''

Answer 5

You can set params on your URL's searchParams:

const url = new URL('http://myapi.com/orders');
url.searchParams.set('order_id', '1');
fetch(url);

This has the advantage of building a request explicitly while allowing the original URL to be in any valid format.

Answer 6

You can use stringify from query-string.

import { stringify } from 'query-string';

fetch(`https://example.org?${stringify(params)}`)

Answer 7

encodeQueryString — encode an object as querystring parameters

/**
 * Encode an object as url query string parameters
 * - includes the leading "?" prefix
 * - example input — {key: "value", alpha: "beta"}
 * - example output — output "?key=value&alpha=beta"
 * - returns empty string when given an empty object
 */
function encodeQueryString(params) {
    const keys = Object.keys(params)
    return keys.length
        ? "?" + keys
            .map(key => encodeURIComponent(key)
                + "=" + encodeURIComponent(params[key]))
            .join("&")
        : ""
}

encodeQueryString({key: "value", alpha: "beta"})
 //> "?key=value&alpha=beta"

Answer 8

I know this is stating the absolute obvious, but I feel it's worth adding this as an answer as it's the simplest of all:

const orderId = 1;
fetch('http://myapi.com/orders?order_id=' + orderId);

Answer 9

Solution without external packages

to perform a GET request using the fetch api I worked on this solution that doesn't require the installation of packages.

this is an example of a call to the google's map api

// encode to scape spaces
const esc = encodeURIComponent;
const url = 'https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?';
const params = { 
    key: "asdkfñlaskdGE",
    address: "evergreen avenue",
    city: "New York"
};
// this line takes the params object and builds the query string
const query = Object.keys(params).map(k => `${esc(k)}=${esc(params[k])}`).join('&')
const res = await fetch(url+query);
const googleResponse = await res.json()

feel free to copy this code and paste it on the console to see how it works!!

the generated url is something like:

https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?key=asdkf%C3%B1laskdGE&address=evergreen%20avenue&city=New%20York

this is what I was looking before I decided to write this, enjoy :D

Answer 10

Maybe this is better:

const withQuery = require('with-query');

fetch(withQuery('https://api.github.com/search/repositories', {
  q: 'query',
  sort: 'stars',
  order: 'asc',
}))
.then(res => res.json())
.then((json) => {
  console.info(json);
})
.catch((err) => {
  console.error(err);
});

Answer 11

I like to use the URL API in such cases

const url = new URL('http://myapi.com/orders');

url.searchParams.append('sort', 'date');
url.searchParams.append('order', 'desc');

fetch(url.href);

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/URL

Answer 12

Template literals are also a valid option here, and provide a few benefits.

You can include raw strings, numbers, boolean values, etc:

    let request = new Request(`https://example.com/?name=${'Patrick'}&number=${1}`);

You can include variables:

    let request = new Request(`https://example.com/?name=${nameParam}`);

You can include logic and functions:

    let request = new Request(`https://example.com/?name=${nameParam !== undefined ? nameParam : getDefaultName() }`);

As far as structuring the data of a larger query string, I like using an array concatenated to a string. I find it easier to understand than some of the other methods:

let queryString = [
  `param1=${getParam(1)}`,
  `param2=${getParam(2)}`,
  `param3=${getParam(3)}`,
].join('&');

let request = new Request(`https://example.com/?${queryString}`, {
  method: 'GET'
});

Answer 13

const query = {
    is_active: true,
};

let url = `${apiUrl}/<endPoint>`;

const searchParams = Object.keys(query).length ? new URLSearchParams(query).toString() : null;

if (searchParams) {url = `${url}?${searchParams}`}

for nextJs 13+

const response = await fetch(url, {
  method: "GET",
  next: {
    // revalidate will be after 4 min
    revalidate: 240,
  },
  // cache: "no-cache",
});

Answer 14

Was just working with Nativescript's fetchModule and figured out my own solution using string manipulation. Append the query string bit by bit to the url. Here is an example where query is passed as a json object (query = {order_id: 1}):

function performGetHttpRequest(fetchLink='http://myapi.com/orders', query=null) {
    if(query) {
        fetchLink += '?';
        let count = 0;
        const queryLength = Object.keys(query).length;
        for(let key in query) {
            fetchLink += key+'='+query[key];
            fetchLink += (count < queryLength) ? '&' : '';
            count++;
        }
    }
    // link becomes: 'http://myapi.com/orders?order_id=1'
    // Then, use fetch as in MDN and simply pass this fetchLink as the url.
}

I tested this over a multiple number of query parameters and it worked like a charm :) Hope this helps someone.