How to get specific part of url that uses ASCII Encoding Reference?

Question

I'm currently trying to retrieve the email from an encoded url similar to this:

https://www.madeupwebsite.com/state=%7B%22application%22:%22SOMETHING%22,%22email%22:%22SOMETHING@madeup.com%22,%22subdomain%22:%22YES%22%7D

I tried decodeURI like this:

const str = 'https://www.madeupwebsite.com/state=%7B%22application%22:%22SOMETHING%22,%22email%22:%22SOMETHING@madeup.com%22,%22subdomain%22:%22YES%22%7D';
const result = decodeURI(str);

but console.log returns this:

"https://www.madeupwebsite.com/state={\"application\":\"SOMETHING\",\"email\":\"SOMETHING@madeup.com\",\"subdomain\":\"YES\"}"

Is there a better way to get the email? Do I have to use regex?

Answer 1

A crude first cut at extracting the email address would be:

JSON.parse(decodeURIComponent(str.substring(str.indexOf('state=') + 6))).email

This yields:

SOMETHING@madeup.com

You have to be more sophisticated, of course, if there are possible multiple parameters besides state in the URL, if you want to do error checking, etc.

Answer 2

Here the solution I came up with:

const decodedUrlObj = decodeURI(str).split("state=").pop();
const formatToJSON = JSON.parse(decodedUrlObj);
console.log("formatToJSON2: ", formatToJSON.username);
// "formatToJSON2: SOMETHING@madeup.com