Query string

A query string is a part of a uniform resource locator (URL) that assigns values to specified parameters. A query string commonly includes fields added to a base URL by a Web browser or other client application, for example as part of an HTML document, choosing the appearance of a page, or jumping to positions in multimedia content.

A web server can handle a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request either by reading a file from its file system based on the URL path or by handling the request using logic that is specific to the type of resource. In cases where special logic is invoked, the query string will be available to that logic for use in its processing, along with the path component of the URL.

See also

• URI fragment
• URI normalization
• URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
• Clean URL
• Click identifier
• Common Gateway Interface (CGI)
• HTTP cookie
• HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
• Semantic URLs
• URI scheme
• UTM parameters
• Web beacon