Best way to get query string from a URL in python?

Question

I need to get the query string from this URL https://stackoverflow.com/questions/ask?next=1&value=3 and I don\'t want to use request.META. I have figured out that there

Answer 1

I prefer using

request.META['QUERY_STRING']

From docs:

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/stable/ref/request-response/#django.http.HttpRequest.META

This does not include the ? prefix.

Answer 2

You can make Query string using GET parameters like this

request.GET.urlencode()

This does not include the ? prefix, and it may not return the keys in the same order as in the original request.

Answer 3

Third option:

>>> from urlparse import urlparse, parse_qs
>>> url = 'http://something.com?blah=1&x=2'
>>> urlparse(url).query
'blah=1&x=2'
>>> parse_qs(urlparse(url).query)
{'blah': ['1'], 'x': ['2']}

In Python 3+ this is available as:

from urllib.parse import parse_qs

Documentation for urllib.parse