decodeURI

The decodeURI() function decodes a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) previously created by encodeURI() or by a similar routine.

Syntax

decodeURI(encodedURI)

Parameters

encodedURI

A complete, encoded Uniform Resource Identifier.

Return value

A new string representing the unencoded version of the given encoded Uniform Resource Identifier (URI).

Exceptions

Throws an URIError ("malformed URI sequence") exception when encodedURI contains invalid character sequences.

Description

Replaces each escape sequence in the encoded URI with the character that it represents, but does not decode escape sequences that could not have been introduced by encodeURI. The character “#” is not decoded from escape sequences.

Examples

Decoding a Cyrillic URL

decodeURI('https://developer.mozilla.org/ru/docs/JavaScript_%D1%88%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%BB%D1%8B');
// "https://developer.mozilla.org/ru/docs/JavaScript_шеллы"

Catching errors

try { 
  var a = decodeURI('%E0%A4%A'); 
} catch(e) { 
  console.error(e); 
}

// URIError: malformed URI sequence

Specifications

Browser compatibilityUpdate compatibility data on GitHub

See also

• decodeURIComponent()
• encodeURI()
• encodeURIComponent()