How Do I Modify the Url Without Reloading the Page?

As a JavaScript developer, you may often come across the need to modify the URL of a webpage without reloading the entire page. This can be useful in scenarios where you want to update the URL to reflect a certain state or parameter change, but don’t want to trigger a full page refresh.

Luckily, there are a few different ways you can achieve this in JavaScript. Let’s explore some of the solutions:

Solution 1: Using the History API

The History API provides methods that allow you to interact with the browser’s session history. One of these methods is pushState(), which allows you to add a new state to the browser’s history stack without triggering a page refresh.

Here’s an example of how you can use the pushState() method to modify the URL:

window.history.pushState(null, null, '/new-url');

This code will update the URL to /new-url without reloading the page. You can also provide additional parameters to the pushState() method to update the browser’s history stack with more information.

Solution 2: Using the URLSearchParams API

If you only need to modify a query parameter in the URL, you can use the URLSearchParams API to easily update the parameter value without reloading the page.

Here’s an example of how you can use the URLSearchParams API to modify a query parameter:

const urlParams = new URLSearchParams(window.location.search);
urlParams.set('param', 'new-value');
window.history.replaceState(null, null, '?' + urlParams.toString());

This code will update the value of the query parameter param to new-value without reloading the page. The replaceState() method is used to update the URL in the browser’s history stack.

Solution 3: Using the hash fragment

If you don’t need to modify the entire URL, but only want to add a hash fragment to the URL, you can use the window.location.hash property to achieve this.

Here’s an example of how you can modify the hash fragment of the URL:

window.location.hash = 'new-hash';

This code will update the hash fragment of the URL to #new-hash without reloading the page. This can be useful for creating anchor links within a single page application.

These are just a few of the ways you can modify the URL without reloading the page using JavaScript. Depending on your specific use case, one of these solutions should work for you. Happy coding!