How does it handle nested keys?

Bracket notation (`user[name]`) becomes nested JSON. Dot notation in the query (`user.name`) can also become nested via toggle.

Repeated keys (`tag=a&tag=b`) become an array. Bracket arrays (`tag[]=a`) also work. Single values don't become arrays by default.

Does it URL-decode values?

Yes automatically. %20 becomes space, %3D becomes =, etc. Toggle off only if you want raw percent-encoded strings.

Ambiguous — the tool favors the bracket-array interpretation. Normalize your query strings on the server side to avoid this.

Turn ?a=1&b=foo into a flat JSON object. Part of the DevTools Surf developer suite. Browse more tools in the Web / Frontend collection.

Query strings were part of the original URL specification (RFC 1738, 1994) and are separated from the path by the '?' character, a convention unchanged for 30 years.
The maximum query string length varies by server: Apache defaults to 8,190 characters, while Nginx allows up to 4,096 by default.
The application/x-www-form-urlencoded content type, used for query strings, was defined in the HTML 2.0 spec (RFC 1866) in 1995.

How does it handle nested keys?: Bracket notation (`user[name]`) becomes nested JSON. Dot notation in the query (`user.name`) can also become nested via toggle.
What about arrays?: Repeated keys (`tag=a&tag=b`) become an array. Bracket arrays (`tag[]=a`) also work. Single values don't become arrays by default.
Does it URL-decode values?: Yes automatically. %20 becomes space, %3D becomes =, etc. Toggle off only if you want raw percent-encoded strings.
What if the same key appears with and without brackets?: Ambiguous — the tool favors the bracket-array interpretation. Normalize your query strings on the server side to avoid this.

Turn ?a=1&b=foo into a flat JSON object. Part of the DevTools Surf developer suite. Browse more tools in the Web / Frontend collection.

Query strings were part of the original URL specification (RFC 1738, 1994) and are separated from the path by the '?' character, a convention unchanged for 30 years.
The maximum query string length varies by server: Apache defaults to 8,190 characters, while Nginx allows up to 4,096 by default.
The application/x-www-form-urlencoded content type, used for query strings, was defined in the HTML 2.0 spec (RFC 1866) in 1995.

How does it handle nested keys?: Bracket notation (`user[name]`) becomes nested JSON. Dot notation in the query (`user.name`) can also become nested via toggle.
What about arrays?: Repeated keys (`tag=a&tag=b`) become an array. Bracket arrays (`tag[]=a`) also work. Single values don't become arrays by default.
Does it URL-decode values?: Yes automatically. %20 becomes space, %3D becomes =, etc. Toggle off only if you want raw percent-encoded strings.
What if the same key appears with and without brackets?: Ambiguous — the tool favors the bracket-array interpretation. Normalize your query strings on the server side to avoid this.