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@garbas Feel free to check last commit 95de1b7 but also be aware of the limitations

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This now works when we load the app with the url that has + in the query parameter of the query string.
But if we input + into the input box it gets replaced by space.

yes exactly. Anyway I'm afraid there is no way around the 2nd problem because even with custom function from elm url parser the strings one work with are already decoded which makes it impossible to tell the which plus is plus and which one is space:/

I guess we will have to resort to ports and implement our own wrapper around Url.Url where we would take values from window.location via ports into the account. That should allow us to distinguish between "space/+" and "+"

I would first like to check where does the escaping happens. If it's in Browser.Navigation or within Url.Parser. If it's the later there would also be option to "patch this on just a parser level" by accessing the raw string. The only kernel function of Url parser seems to be binding to decode/encodeURIComponent. https://github.com/elm/url/blob/master/src/Elm/Kernel/Url. If we'll be able to get undecoded data from navigation object in elm we might consider either:

1. replacing url Parser with implementation that gives us access to the raw string
2. using navigation object as a workaround.

I'll let you know once I know more.

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@garbas See the last commit - it implements pure elm solution. In theory it would be possible to just wrap whole elm/url Parser and embed it into larger custom Parser structure to build new nice API in which it would be possible to define this function as part of Parser type. Anyway that would be a lot of code. Current approach is an attempt for pragmatic compromise - not a complete hack but not a full blown custom url parser library either. Let me know what you think.