Question

The Problem

What is the proper way to check for the foo parameter in the following url’s querystring using asp.net? Is this even possible?

http://example.com?bar=3&foo

I have tried checking Request["foo"] as well as Request.QueryString["foo"] and I get null for both. I have also tried populating a List with the values from the QueryString collection but as I mention below, it does not include the value.

The Question

I understand that there is no value, but shouldn’t Request["foo"] return an empty string rather than null? Is there a way to find out if a querystring key exists even if it has no value?

Notes

I found here that Request.QueryString.AllKeys includes null for blank querystring parameters.

[edit]

As stated below by James and Dreas a Regex to parse the raw url might be the best (and possibly only) approach.

Regex.IsMatch(Request.RawUrl, "[?&]thumb([&=]|$)")

Answer 1

You can use null as the key for the NameValueCollection and it will give you a comma-delimited list of parameter names that don’t have values.

For http://example.com?bar=3&foo you would use Request.QueryString[null] and it would retrieve foo.

If you have more than one parameter name without a value, it will give you a value that is comma-delimited.

For http://example.com?bar=3&foo&test you would get foo,test as a value back.

Update:

You can actually use Request.QueryString.GetValues(null) to get the parameter names that don’t have values.