Parse a URI String into Name-Value Collection

If you are looking for a way to achieve it without using an external library, the following code will help you.

public static Map<String, String> splitQuery(URL url) throws UnsupportedEncodingException {
    Map<String, String> query_pairs = new LinkedHashMap<String, String>();
    String query = url.getQuery();
    String[] pairs = query.split("&");
    for (String pair : pairs) {
        int idx = pair.indexOf("=");
        query_pairs.put(URLDecoder.decode(pair.substring(0, idx), "UTF-8"), URLDecoder.decode(pair.substring(idx + 1), "UTF-8"));
    }
    return query_pairs;
}

You can access the returned Map using <map>.get("client_id"), with the URL given in your question this would return “SS”.

UPDATE URL-Decoding added

UPDATE As this answer is still quite popular, I made an improved version of the method above, which handles multiple parameters with the same key and parameters with no value as well.

public static Map<String, List<String>> splitQuery(URL url) throws UnsupportedEncodingException {
  final Map<String, List<String>> query_pairs = new LinkedHashMap<String, List<String>>();
  final String[] pairs = url.getQuery().split("&");
  for (String pair : pairs) {
    final int idx = pair.indexOf("=");
    final String key = idx > 0 ? URLDecoder.decode(pair.substring(0, idx), "UTF-8") : pair;
    if (!query_pairs.containsKey(key)) {
      query_pairs.put(key, new LinkedList<String>());
    }
    final String value = idx > 0 && pair.length() > idx + 1 ? URLDecoder.decode(pair.substring(idx + 1), "UTF-8") : null;
    query_pairs.get(key).add(value);
  }
  return query_pairs;
}

UPDATE Java8 version

public Map<String, List<String>> splitQuery(URL url) {
    if (Strings.isNullOrEmpty(url.getQuery())) {
        return Collections.emptyMap();
    }
    return Arrays.stream(url.getQuery().split("&"))
            .map(this::splitQueryParameter)
            .collect(Collectors.groupingBy(SimpleImmutableEntry::getKey, LinkedHashMap::new, mapping(Map.Entry::getValue, toList())));
}

public SimpleImmutableEntry<String, String> splitQueryParameter(String it) {
    final int idx = it.indexOf("=");
    final String key = idx > 0 ? it.substring(0, idx) : it;
    final String value = idx > 0 && it.length() > idx + 1 ? it.substring(idx + 1) : null;
    return new SimpleImmutableEntry<>(
        URLDecoder.decode(key, StandardCharsets.UTF_8),
        URLDecoder.decode(value, StandardCharsets.UTF_8)
    );
}

Running the above method with the URL

https://stackoverflow.com?param1=value1&param2=&param3=value3&param3

returns this Map:

{param1=["value1"], param2=[null], param3=["value3", null]}