How do I modify the URL without reloading the page?

Asked 2023-09-20 20:22:25 View 263,375

Is there a way I can modify the URL of the current page without reloading the page?

I would like to access the portion before the # hash if possible.

I only need to change the portion after the domain, so it's not like I'm violating cross-domain policies.

 window.location.href = "www.mysite.com/page2.php";  // this reloads
  • Just to make it easier to understand the question, this is what Facebook does when you open a photo, for example. The url bar changes to point DIRECTLY to that photo, so you can share the URL without losing where you are in the site. Remember sites based on framing last decade? You could only get the homepage url, because only internal frames were changing. And that was terrible. - anyone
  • While history.pushState() is probably the right answer here, in this situation (depending on the exact circumstances...) the possibility of using a server-side redirect (such as via using Apache's RewriteRule directive) is something you might want to consider, or at least be aware of. Just thought it should be mentioned! - anyone
  • window.history.replaceState(null, document.title, "/page2.php") is probably what most people are looking for. - anyone

Answers

This can now be done in Chrome, Safari, Firefox 4+, and Internet Explorer 10pp4+!

See this question's answer for more information: Updating address bar with new URL without hash or reloading the page

Example:

 function processAjaxData(response, urlPath){
     document.getElementById("content").innerHTML = response.html;
     document.title = response.pageTitle;
     window.history.pushState({"html":response.html,"pageTitle":response.pageTitle},"", urlPath);
 }

You can then use window.onpopstate to detect the back/forward button navigation:

window.onpopstate = function(e){
    if(e.state){
        document.getElementById("content").innerHTML = e.state.html;
        document.title = e.state.pageTitle;
    }
};

For a more in-depth look at manipulating browser history, see this MDN article.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:22:25

  • Please note the OP makes it clear they are not trying to navigate to a different origin; "not like I'm violating cross-domain policies." -- however, I am trying to do that, and the window.history API does not allow cross-origin navigation via pushState, (which is reasonable... as the Mozilla site says, " The new URL must be of the same origin as the current URL; otherwise, pushState() will throw an exception.") - anyone
  • Can I asks what is the value of response.html? Is that a string of HTML? - anyone
  • What data should be passed to "response"? - anyone
  • @EdisonPebojot when you change the URL, you're expected to also change the html content of he page. Where you get that HTML is totally up to the developer and you don't have to do it like in this example. You also need to support back/forward buttons and re-create the page content. - anyone
  • Is there any workaround for changing it with a different domain? This works only when the target URL is under the same domain. - anyone

HTML5 introduced the history.pushState() and history.replaceState() methods, which allow you to add and modify history entries, respectively.

window.history.pushState('page2', 'Title', '/page2.php');

Read more about this from here

Answered   2023-09-20 20:22:25

  • Great answer, also can change the current history rather than adding another one, using replaceState(); developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History_API/… - anyone
  • I get A history state object with URL 'file:///C:/Users/.../newUrl' cannot be created in a document with origin 'null' and URL 'file:///C:/Users/.../oldUrl.pdf' . Is it because it's a local disk URL? - anyone
  • What happens if I use null as the first parameter of pushState()? - anyone

You can also use HTML5 replaceState if you want to change the url but don't want to add the entry to the browser history:

if (window.history.replaceState) {
   //prevents browser from storing history with each change:
   window.history.replaceState(statedata, title, url);
}

This would 'break' the back button functionality. This may be required in some instances such as an image gallery (where you want the back button to return back to the gallery index page instead of moving back through each and every image you viewed) whilst giving each image its own unique url.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:22:25

Here is my solution (newUrl is your new URL which you want to replace with the current one):

history.pushState({}, null, newUrl);

Answered   2023-09-20 20:22:25

  • Best to test first with if (history.pushState) {} Just in case old browser. - anyone
  • This doesn't work any more you will get in Firefox: The operation is insecure. - anyone
  • And the user can even set a bookmark with that approach, beautiful! I can now update the url on user input and he can directly bookmark whatever his settings are. - anyone
  • hey kkatusic, thats why Craig Jacobs said TEST. You Test it by trying to execute the new html5 version (test 1) and if that fails you test the older version and if that fails you have problems, if the test succeeds for either object then you know if the brower is new or old. pretty simple logic buddy! Upvote for Craig! :) - anyone
  • @GregoryBowers I don't think kkatusic is saying the method doesn't exist, he said it shows a security error/warning when run. So that test would not fail and would still run the function. The test suggested by Craig does not "try to execute the new html5" function, it just checks it exists in the history object. - anyone

NOTE: If you are working with an HTML5 browser then you should ignore this answer. This is now possible as can be seen in the other answers.

There is no way to modify the URL in the browser without reloading the page. The URL represents what the last loaded page was. If you change it (document.location) then it will reload the page.

One obvious reason being, you write a site on www.mysite.com that looks like a bank login page. Then you change the browser URL bar to say www.mybank.com. The user will be totally unaware that they are really looking at www.mysite.com.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:22:25

  • remove it or add html4, because currently it displayed in google search as quick answer - anyone
parent.location.hash = "hello";

Answered   2023-09-20 20:22:25

  • I want to change the URL, not just the hash -- #mydata - anyone
  • Changing the hash can be useful in ajax as it's a kind of state without using cookies, is bookmarkable, and compatible with browser back buttons. Gmail uses this nowadays to make it more browser friendly. - anyone
  • @Jarvis: what is the difference? - anyone
  • @noisy Server side tracking cannot see hashes unless sent to the tracking service explicitly. - anyone
  • This only partially answers the question. We want the url to change, not the hash. - anyone

In modern browsers and HTML5, there is a method called pushState on window history. That will change the URL and push it to the history without loading the page.

You can use it like this, it will take 3 parameters, 1) state object 2) title and a URL):

window.history.pushState({page: "another"}, "another page", "example.html");

This will change the URL, but not reload the page. Also, it doesn't check if the page exists, so if you do some JavaScript code that is reacting to the URL, you can work with them like this.

Also, there is history.replaceState() which does exactly the same thing, except it will modify the current history instead of creating a new one!

Also you can create a function to check if history.pushState exist, then carry on with the rest like this:

function goTo(page, title, url) {
  if ("undefined" !== typeof history.pushState) {
    history.pushState({page: page}, title, url);
  } else {
    window.location.assign(url);
  }
}

goTo("another page", "example", 'example.html');

Also, you can change the # for <HTML5 browsers, which won't reload the page. That's the way Angular uses to do SPA according to hashtag...

Changing # is quite easy, doing like:

window.location.hash = "example";

And you can detect it like this:

window.onhashchange = function () {
  console.log("#changed", window.location.hash);
}

Answered   2023-09-20 20:22:25

  • Would window.onhashchange and window.onpopstate do the same in this case? - anyone
  • How to load page contents as well? It just replaces the URL - anyone
  • Load content as you would normally do with ajax. - anyone
  • Why do you need to prepend with window. ? My code works without it. if (history.replaceState) history.replaceState({}, document.title, "?newUrl") - anyone

The HTML5 replaceState is the answer, as already mentioned by Vivart and geo1701. However it is not supported in all browsers/versions. History.js wraps HTML5 state features and provides additional support for HTML4 browsers.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:22:25

Before HTML5 we can use:

parent.location.hash = "hello";

and:

window.location.replace("http:www.example.com");

This method will reload your page, but HTML5 introduced the history.pushState(page, caption, replace_url) that should not reload your page.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:22:25

  • The problem with history.pushState(..) is, that if you want to redirect to another domain, the cross domain policy come in effect. While with window.location.replace(..)redirecting to another domain is possible. - anyone

If what you're trying to do is allow users to bookmark/share pages, and you don't need it to be exactly the right URL, and you're not using hash anchors for anything else, then you can do this in two parts; you use the location. hash discussed above, and then implement a check on the home page, to look for a URL with a hash anchor in it, and redirect you to the subsequent result.

For instance:

  1. User is on www.site.com/section/page/4

  2. User does some action which changes the URL to www.site.com/#/section/page/6 (with the hash). Say you've loaded the correct content for page 6 into the page, so apart from the hash the user is not too disturbed.

  3. User passes this URL on to someone else, or bookmarks it

  4. Someone else, or the same user at a later date, goes to www.site.com/#/section/page/6

  5. Code on www.site.com/ redirects the user to www.site.com/section/page/6, using something like this:

if (window.location.hash.length > 0){ 
   window.location = window.location.hash.substring(1);
}

Hope that makes sense! It's a useful approach for some situations.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:22:25

You can use this beautiful and simple function to do so anywhere on your application.

function changeurl(url, title) {
    var new_url = '/' + url;
    window.history.pushState('data', title, new_url);
    
}

You can not only edit the URL but you can update the title along with it.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:22:25

  • Works like a charm even for anchors window.history.pushState('data', 'Title', '#new_location'); - anyone
  • why don't you use the 'title' argument as title in pushState? - anyone

Below is the function to change the URL without reloading the page. It is only supported for HTML5.

  function ChangeUrl(page, url) {
        if (typeof (history.pushState) != "undefined") {
            var obj = {Page: page, Url: url};
            history.pushState(obj, obj.Page, obj.Url);
        } else {
            window.location.href = "homePage";
            // alert("Browser does not support HTML5.");
        }
    }

  ChangeUrl('Page1', 'homePage');

Answered   2023-09-20 20:22:25

  • @Green, page is a short title for the state to which you're moving. Firefox currently ignores this parameter, although it may use it in the future. Passing the empty string here should be safe against future changes to the method. From: developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/… - anyone

Any changes of the loction (either window.location or document.location) will cause a request on that new URL, if you’re not just changing the URL fragment. If you change the URL, you change the URL.

Use server-side URL rewrite techniques like Apache’s mod_rewrite if you don’t like the URLs you are currently using.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:22:25

  • Can I use "location.pathname"?? - anyone
  • No, changing that attribute will cause a request too. - anyone

You can add anchor tags. I use this on my site so that I can track with Google Analytics what people are visiting on the page.

I just add an anchor tag and then the part of the page I want to track:

var trackCode = "/#" + urlencode($("myDiv").text());
window.location.href = "http://www.piano-chords.net" + trackCode;
pageTracker._trackPageview(trackCode);

Answered   2023-09-20 20:22:25

As pointed out by Thomas Stjernegaard Jeppesen, you could use History.js to modify URL parameters whilst the user navigates through your Ajax links and apps.

Almost an year has passed since that answer, and History.js grew and became more stable and cross-browser. Now it can be used to manage history states in HTML5-compliant as well as in many HTML4-only browsers. In this demo You can see an example of how it works (as well as being able to try its functionalities and limits.

Should you need any help in how to use and implement this library, i suggest you to take a look at the source code of the demo page: you will see it's very easy to do.

Finally, for a comprehensive explanation of what can be the issues about using hashes (and hashbangs), check out this link by Benjamin Lupton.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:22:25

Use history.pushState() from the HTML 5 History API.

Refer to the HTML5 History API for more details.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:22:25

Your new url.

let newUrlIS =  window.location.origin + '/user/profile/management';

In a sense, calling pushState() is similar to setting window.location = "#foo", in that both will also create and activate another history entry associated with the current document. But pushState() has a few advantages:

history.pushState({}, null, newUrlIS);

You can check out the root: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History_API

Answered   2023-09-20 20:22:25

  • please add a reference to the supposed "advantages" of pushState :) - anyone

This code works for me. I used it into my application in ajax.

history.pushState({ foo: 'bar' }, '', '/bank');

Once a page load into an ID using ajax, It does change the browser url automatically without reloading the page.

This is ajax function bellow.

function showData(){
    $.ajax({
      type: "POST",
      url: "Bank.php", 
      data: {}, 
      success: function(html){          
        $("#viewpage").html(html).show();
        $("#viewpage").css("margin-left","0px");
      }
    });
  }

Example: From any page or controller like "Dashboard", When I click on the bank, it loads bank list using the ajax code without reloading the page. At this time, browser URL will not be changed.

history.pushState({ foo: 'bar' }, '', '/bank');

But when I use this code into the ajax, it change the browser url without reloading the page. This is the full ajax code here in the bellow.

function showData(){
        $.ajax({
          type: "POST",
          url: "Bank.php", 
          data: {}, 
          success: function(html){          
            $("#viewpage").html(html).show();
            $("#viewpage").css("margin-left","0px");
            history.pushState({ foo: 'bar' }, '', '/bank');
          }
        });
      }

Answered   2023-09-20 20:22:25

These two lines are all you need.

    var new_url="Your modified URL";
    window.history.pushState(null,"",new_url);

Answered   2023-09-20 20:22:25

  • How is this answer different from Alireza's answer in 2017? All you did was create a variable for the new_url - otherwise, it is the exact same answer without the additional explanation. Also, you did not explain the purpose of the "data" or "Title" parameters, or how they can be used. Please delete this unnecessary answer. -1 - anyone
  • Sorry for that. I edited my answer because I copy and pasted from my old project. I didn't explain it correctly and I forgot to change the details. Maybe this answer is not different. But, It worked for me. Thank anyway. :) - anyone

This is all you will need to navigate without reload

// add setting without reload 
location.hash = "setting";

// if url change with hash do somthing
window.addEventListener('hashchange', () => {
    console.log('url hash changed!');
});

// if url change do somthing (dont detect changes with hash)
//window.addEventListener('locationchange', function(){
//    console.log('url changed!');
//})


// remove #setting without reload 

history.back();

Answered   2023-09-20 20:22:25

  • “I would like to access the portion before the # hash if possible.” - anyone

Simply use, it will not reload the page, but just the URL :

$('#form_name').attr('action', '/shop/index.htm').submit();

Answered   2023-09-20 20:22:25

  • This makes no sense - anyone
  • This requires jQuery even if jQuery has never been mentioned in the question. This calls submit on a <form> which, by default, reloads the page, which was specifically requested to be avoided. “it will not reload the page, but just the URL” is guaranteed to be false. Why was this posted as an answer to this question? - anyone