How to get the URL and fragments in JavaScript?

There are several ways to get the URL and fragments in Javascript. Use the built-in methods or you may use the third-party libraries to fetch, parse and validate the URLs in Javascript.

1) Use the built-in browser methods to get the URL and fragments in JavaScript

The built-in browser methods are:

• window.location.href
• window.location.pathname
• window.location.hash
• window.location.host
• window.location.port
• window.location.origin

To get the current page URL using JavaScript, you can use the window.location.href property. This property returns the full URL of the current page, including the protocol (http:// or https://), the hostname, the path, and the query string.

For example, if the current page is https://example.com/foo?bar=baz, the window.location.href property would return https://example.com/foo?bar=baz.

console.log(window.location.href); // Full page URL

// eg. https://example.com/foo?bar=baz#services 

console.log(window.location.pathname); // page path

// eg. /foo

console.log(window.location.hash); // The anchor part of the URL

// eg. #services

console.log(window.location.host); // The host name

// eg. example.com

console.log(window.location.origin); // The protocol, hostname and port number of the URL

// eg. https://example.com
// or
// http://localhost:8888

console.log(window.location.port); // The port number

// eg. 8888, from the url (http://localhost:8888)

2) Use third-party libraries to get the URL and fragments

There are many third-party libraries that can do the same task in JavaScript, such as:

1. URL.js
2. Uri.js

All these libraries are used to parse and format URLs in JavaScript.

URL.js

<script src="https://unpkg.com/url-js"></script>

or install it with npm:

npm i -S url-js

then import it as ES Module or CommonJS Module:

import URLJS from 'url-js'; // ESM
// or
const URLJS = require('url-js'); // CommonJS

var url = URLJS("https://example.com/foo?bar=baz#services") ->
{
    "protocol": "https:",
    "username": "",
    "password": "",
    "host"    : "example.com",
    "hostname": "example.com",
    "port"    : "",
    "pathname": "/foo",
    "search"  : "?bar=baz",
    "query"   : "bar=baz",
    "hash"    : "#services",
    "path"    : "/foo?bar=baz",
    "origin"  : "https://example.com",
    "domain"  : "example.com",
    "href"    : "https://example.com/foo?bar=baz#services"
}

URI.js

URI.js is a URL parsing, validating, and resolving library for all JavaScript environments.

npm i uri-js

Usage of URI.js

URI.parse("uri://user:[email protected]:123/one/two.three?q1=a1&q2=a2#body");
//returns:
//{
//  scheme : "uri",
//  userinfo : "user:pass",
//  host : "example.com",
//  port : 123,
//  path : "/one/two.three",
//  query : "q1=a1&q2=a2",
//  fragment : "body"
//}

Now you can easily get the URL and fragments in Javascript. Which method you choose depends on your needs and preferences.