window.location

The location is an object that contains information about the URL of the currently loaded page.

For example, location.href, is the full URL and location.hostname is only the domain.

An example to view of properties of the location object for an url.

Consider a URL like this:

http://search.example.com:8080/search?v=javascript#results

snippet

for (var i in location) {
    console.log(i + ' = "' + location[i] + '"');
}

Output

href = "http://search.example.com:8080/search?v=javascript#results" hash = "#results" host = "search.example.com:8080" hostname = "search.example.com" pathname = "/search" port = "8080" protocol = "http:" search = "?v=javascript"

There are also three methods that location provides—reload(), assign() and replace().

There are different ways to navigate to another page using location object properties and methods.

Redirection

window.location.href = 'http://www.packtpub.com'
location.href = 'http://www.packtpub.com'
location = 'http://www.packtpub.com'
location.assign('http://www.packtpub.com')
location.replace('http://www.yahoo.com')

replace() is almost the same as assign(). The difference is that it doesn't create an entry in the browser's history list.

Reload

To reload a page you can use: location.reload()

You can use location.href to point it to itself, like so.

window.location.href = window.location.href

Or simply:

location = location

Location Object Properties

Property	Description
`hash`	Sets or returns the anchor part (#) of a URL
`host`	Sets or returns the hostname and port number of a URL
`hostname`	Sets or returns the hostname of a URL
`href`	Sets or returns the entire URL
`origin`	Returns the protocol, hostname and port number of a URL
`pathname`	Sets or returns the path name of a URL
`port`	Sets or returns the port number of a URL
`protocol`	Sets or returns the protocol of a URL
`search`	Sets or returns the querystring part of a URL

Location Object Methods

Method	Description
`assign()`	Loads a new document
`reload()`	Reloads the current document
`replace()`	Replaces the current document with a new one