How to get the parameters of an href attribute of a link from the click event object

Question

Is there a simple way to get the parameters at the end of an href attribute of a clicked link using the click event object?

I have some jQuery code that looks like this:

Answer 1

Developing Sarfraz answer, given an anchor

click here

You can get the query params

jQuery(document).ready(function($) {
  $('a.the_link').click(function(){    // when clicking on the link
    var href = $(this).attr('href');   // get the href of the anchor
    var params = get_params_from_href(href);
    console.log(params);               // OUTPUT: [a: "1", date: "2014-7-30", cat: "all"] 
    return false;                      // optional. do not navigate to href.
  });

  function get_params_from_href(href){
    var paramstr = href.split('?')[1];        // get what's after '?' in the href
    var paramsarr = paramstr.split('&');      // get all key-value items
    var params = Array();
    for (var i = 0; i < paramsarr.length; i++) {
        var tmparr = paramsarr[i].split('='); // split key from value
        params[tmparr[0]] = tmparr[1];        // sort them in a arr[key] = value way
    }
    return params;
  }
}