easy parsing for both query strings & hash into a casted object literal

query-string-parse.js

/**
 * parse given query string url, and return it as
 * object literal with proper type casting for primitives
 * 
 * @param {string} url
 * @return {object} queryString
 * 
 * notes:
 * - requires jQuery for linear typecasting
 * - parameter names are all lowercased
 * 
 * example:
 * parseQueryString( location.search ) // parse real query-string
 * parseQueryString( location.hash )   // a query-string like hash
 */
 
function parseQueryString( url ) {
  var pairs = url.slice( 1 ).split( '&' );
  var hash = {};
  for ( var i = pairs.length - 1; i >= 0; i-- ) {
    var keyValue = pairs[ i ].split( '=' );
    hash[ 'data-' + keyValue[ 0 ] ] = keyValue[ 1 ];
  };
  // using jQuery to smart cast values
  return $( '<div />' ).attr( hash ).data();
}