How to decode url-encoded string in javascript

Question

I use javascript / jquery to fill dom elements that contain umlauts:

var text1 = "Unser platonisches Internetreich droht in die H%E4nde einer bewaffneten Miliz zu fallen."

$("#quote1 span").html(unescape(text1));

How can I get rid of the url encoding e.g. "H%E4nde" and use "Hände" instead? I tried

<meta charset="utf-8" />

<meta name="http-equiv" content="Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8"/>

<script type="text/javascript" src="js/index.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

But none of them seem to work...

Thanks for help.

What Every Programmer Absolutely, Positively Needs To Know About Encodings And Character Sets To Work With Text — deceze
– deceze ♦, Commented May 20, 2013 at 8:36
I just want to save text in a string and then send it to an dom element. The only way I found was to put in the escape sequences manually and then use unescape. — Michael Schmidt
– Michael Schmidt, Commented May 20, 2013 at 14:07

Lepidosteus · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-20 08:15:38Z

77

That is not UTF-8, that is percent encoding also known as url encoding.

You can use decodeURIComponent() to convert it back before displaying it

$("#quote1 span").html(decodeURIComponent(text1));

answered May 20, 2013 at 8:15

Lepidosteus

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Chukwuemeka Maduekwe · Accepted Answer · 2021-03-19 09:09:49Z

26

Use either of the following built in JavaScript function to decode any encoded text. No need for jquery or any other library.

const text1 = "Unser platonisches Internetreich droht in die H%E4nde einer bewaffneten Miliz zu fallen."

console.log(decodeURI(text1))

console.log(decodeURIComponent(text1))

update: In case you're wondering how to encode, decoded text, you can use another built in JavaScript function like so

console.log(encodeURI(text1))

console.log(encodeURIComponent(text1))

edited Mar 19, 2021 at 9:09

answered Oct 20, 2020 at 7:35

Chukwuemeka Maduekwe

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1 Comment

vhs Over a year ago

This answer can be improved by sharing the conditions under which one might want to use one decoder over the other.

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