How do I make this string normal in javascript?

Question

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&amp;NR=1&amp;v=Ahha3Cqe_fk

For some reason, the string is that. How can I change the & and make them real symbols?

Do I URL encode or decode?

possible duplicate of [JavaScript URL Decode function](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4292914/javascript-url-decode-function) — Andrew Whitaker, Jan 06 '12 at 00:55
@MyStupidSelf: Ugh it's getting late. Please disregard the close vote. — Andrew Whitaker, Jan 06 '12 at 00:58
Just a wee note: that's still a perfectly valid URL! & is a perfectly cromulent HTML character entity. — Fleep, Jan 06 '12 at 01:29

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 06 '12 at 00:55

$("<div>", {html: "http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=Ahha3Cqe_fk"}).text()

or

var div = document.createElement("div");
div.innerHTML = "http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&amp;NR=1&amp;v=Ahha3Cqe_fk";
div.firstChild.nodeValue;

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 06 '12 at 00:52

0

$url=str_replace("&amp;","&",$url);

It has nothing to do with url encoding. & is an HTML entity of the & symbol.

Pretty much the same deal in JS

url.replace("&amp;","&");

answered Jan 06 '12 at 00:52

Adam Fowler

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So yeah I did get carried away with my PHP. – Adam Fowler Jan 06 '12 at 00:57
I'll offset the negative vote, this is much better than the horde of completely irrelevant url decode answers. You want `url.replace(/&/g,"&");` though – Esailija Jan 06 '12 at 01:05

Russell Dias · Answer 3 · 2012-01-06T01:06:36.040

0

Create a DOM element, assign above encoded string to its innerHTML and return nodeValue.

That will be a more robust solution. If you simply want to tackle this one entity an explicit .replace() will do the trick: url.replace(/&/g, "&").

edited Jan 06 '12 at 01:06

answered Jan 06 '12 at 00:56

Russell Dias

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How do I make this string normal in javascript?

3 Answers3