Stop reload when using window.location - javascript

On click of a button I am changing window.location.href, i.e. I am adding one query string parameter. This causes the page to be refreshed (as I am changing window.location.href).
I want to know is it possible to stop this page refresh and append the query string in the url?

No. You can change the #hashstring, but changing the query string results in a reload.

Any assignment of new values to the location object from JavaScript will load a new page.
It is possible to change the hash value without refreshing the page but not the query string.
See this thread: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=552076

Take a look at this thread, maybe it will help you.

If you append a #hashstring the page will not reload. In addition, if the user hits the back button on the browser it will remove the #hashstring. The #hashstring can be useful for saving state in the URL bar without causing a reload and can be coupled with ajax calls.
It's important to note that the #hashstring will not be sent to the server and is only visible to the web browser. For example: http://example.com/#blah
Will generate a http request that looks like:
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
The #blah does not get sent down to the server by the browser.

Related

window.history.pushState doesnt navigate to where i want it

I am trying to make a navigation button that just sends me to the index page but shows a different text in the url.
so i found this line of code to help me do it.
window.history.pushState("index.php", "test", "Testie");
But the problem is when i run it in an onclick function it just takes the last value and puts it in the url bar.
That itself is not the problem its that i dont have a Testie.html/php file.
I want it to be send to index.php but make the appearance of Testie in the url.
How do i do it?
The purpose of history.pushState is to say:
Some other JavaScript has manipulated the page so what the user is seeing is the same as what they would see if they went to this URL.
It lets you get fast updates to the page and bookmarkable URLs with real content that is good for fast initial page loads and for search engines to index.
It doesn't send data to the server (you need to do that with other code).
It does mean that if the URL isn't actually handled by the server (as you say it is in your case) then the page will break if the user does bookmark the page (or refreshes it, or sends the link to someone, etc).
If you want to navigate to a URL with Testie in it, then the first thing to do is to make the server support it. Forget about JavaScript.

JavaScript: how to pass additional information to source page?

I have a website and when a user follows an internal link I would like to pass some extra information to a new page, so JavaScript on the destination page could do some useful highlighting.
There is an option to pass that information via the link parameters (GET), but it will generate lots of virtually duplicate pages and break pretty URLs concept. Another way is to make a webapp using AJAX, but it will also bound content to a single URL.
How can I transparently pass some information to the new page during navigation w/o messing with site's URL structure?
You could store the data in local storage or session storage, and retrieve it again on the destination page.
So you have a few options.
Form Submission
First option post a form with the data. Add a hidden form, on the anchor click capture the click event, set the hidden fields with the values you want to send to the next page, and submit the form. On the next page, read the post parameters in the backend and update the page.
Local Storage
On click of the anchor, set localStorage to the values you want to appear on the next page. When the next page loads, read the localStorage values and update the page. Note: The server will not have access to the values
Ajax with pushState
Use Ajax to submit the form. When the Ajax call returns, use window.history.pushState to update the url with whatever url you want to be displayed to the user.
One of the options not mentioned is to create a dirty URL:
/destination/param1/value1/...
then strip additional parameters at server-side and redirect:
/destination
keeping additional values stored at server-side (e.g. via sessions). I still prefer using sessionStorage in a real application, but it worth mentioning anyway.
What do you mean it will "bind content to a single url"? AJAX request is the first thing that comes to my mind as the solution to this problem. You dont have to use the url of the page to make the ajax request, you can build the url inside your javascript based on whatever conditions exist in your application.
Besides AJAX and passing parameters in the URL, the only other thing I can think of is to use Cookies. That of course runs into problems if the user has cookies disabled. I think an Ajax call to your server is the most robust way of handling the problem.

How to send a GET request with a specific query string to my page using Jquery?

This code toggles the color of an element whenever you click on it. But how can I send a GET request with query string ?toggle=True on the first toggle and ?toggle=False on the second one?
Ow, I can see it appearing in Firebug, but not in the url of the page. Any idea why?
Making a request and changing the URI in the address bar are two different things unless you cause the browser to load a completely new page.
If you want to do that, then you should forget about using client side JavaScript and move your logic server side and use a regular link.
In the server side logic, the value of the query string argument would be used to determine the class of the div (which is used to set the style) and the href of the link (i.e. if it has True or False in the query string).
If you want to avoid loading a new page, then you are looking at two separate steps.
The first one you already have (the changing of the style using JS).
The rest gets more complicated…
First you need server side logic so that True/False in the query string will set up the initial state of the page correctly. This will be the same as the logic described for the previous method.
Then you need to update the URI so that it matches the one that would load the page in the state you are altering the current page into. This is done using the History API (pushState and friends). There are more details on the subject on this question.
If you want to notify the server of the change, then you'll need to use jQuery.get, as well as updating the page and changing the URI in the address bar. To be efficient, you should probably add an additional query string argument (so you can tell if it from Ajax from that a normal page load) and have the server return a simple acknowledgement rather than the whole HTML document when it sees that argument.
Just use jQuery's get method to do so or do it yourself in your toggle functions.
A pragmatic yet pretty basic solution may be to use a local variable as a counter.. If the counter is even, send True, if odd, send False.
Increment counter on each click :)

Preserve page state for revisiting using browser back button

I have a page that dynamically loads content based on a user pushing a button:
${document).ready(function)
{
$("#myButton").click(function()
{
$("#dynamicDiv").load("www.example.com");
});
}
The dynamic content works fine, I can fetch pages all day long. But after you follow a link to another page, then press the browser back button to come back to the page, the page is completely reset as though no dynamic content had ever been loaded.
I swear I've seen different behavior before, but maybe I'm insane. Shouldn't the browser preserve the state of the page, rather than re-rendering it?
EDIT:
By the way, I'm using Play! framework, if that has any bearing on this.
The browser loads the page as it was first received. Any DOM modifications done via javascript will not be preserved.
If you want to preserve the modifications you will have to do some extra work. After you modify the DOM, update the url hash with an identifier that you can later parse and recreate the modification. Whenever the page is loaded you need to check for the presence of a hash and do the DOM modifications based on the identifier.
For example if you are displaying user information dynamically. Every time you display one you would change the url hash to something like this: "#/user/john". Whenever the page loads you need to check if the hash exists (window.location.hash), parse it, and load the user information.
Implementing browser back functionality is hard.
It gets easier when you use a plugin like jquery.history.js.
http://tkyk.github.com/jquery-history-plugin/
A technique I use for this is to serialize state to JSON, store it in the hash string, and then read it back when the page is navigated back to. This has been tested in IE10+, Firefox, Chrome.
Example:
// On state change or at least before navigating away from the page, serialize and encode the state
// data you want to retain into the hash string
window.location.hash = encodeURIComponent(JSON.stringify(myData));
// If navigating away using Javascript, be sure to use window.location.href over window.location.replace
window.location.href = '/another-page-url'
....
// On page load (e.g. in an init function), if there is data in the #hash, overwrite initial state data
// by decoding and parsing the JSON string
if (window.location.hash) {
// Read the hash string omitting the # prefix
var hashJson = window.location.hash.substring(1);
// Restore the deserialized data to memory
myData = JSON.parse(decodeURIComponent(hashJson));
}
epignosisx and Malcolm are both right. It's also known as "deep linking". We used the JQuery Address Plugin to deal with this in a recent Play application.
http://www.asual.com/jquery/address/

How to manipulate the URL with Javascript and JQuery?

I want to make a page with a lot of Javascript interactions. However, while a user navigates through the page the URL must change too. So, when the user shares the URL or saves it, it can lead him to the actual state he was.
How can I do that?
Examples:
myapp.com/page1
myapp.com/page2
pushState, as seen on github
Answered by this SO question: Change the URL in the browser without loading the new page using JavaScript
The only part of the url (or location) that you can change without reloading the page, is the hash. That is the part behind the #. Many ajax enhanced applications make use of this, including Twitter. You can change this hash on the go, and interpret the hash tag on page load to initialize the page to the correct state.
Set this value: window.location.href
window.location.href = "myapp.com/page2";

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