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I need to change the current url after a form has been submitted using an AJAX GET request.

I've tried to use history.pushState(null, null, url+'?'+form.serialize()) and it works fine. The problem is that what I'm retrieving is only a subset of the page, therefore the browser will display that subset instead of the whole page when navigating through history.

I like history.pushState approach, but it doesn't look viable; do you know any better way? Or, even better, do you know how to save the whole content of the page instead of the subset?

The url I need to get is mydomain.com/some-page?variable=1&varialbe_2=2

To give you more informations: the controller method I need to access detects if the route has been called by an Ajax request, and if it has the response will be json. Otherwise it will load the whole page normally.

Thanks for any help you can give.

clod986
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1 Answers1

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If you just want to change the current page, the following will do the trick:

window.location.href = url+'?'+form.serialize()

If you want to persist page states you could also use localstorage or sessionstorage to save the data, then just check and load it when the page opens. It won't be easy to share (query strings in URLs are easy to copy and paste) but will allow you to persist a lot more data.

If you are trying to reload just one element on the page, then push state is exactly what you are looking for, you just need to respond to the user navigating backwards.

From another SO Answer:

window.onpopstate = function(event)
{
    alert("location: " + document.location + ", state: " + JSON.stringify(event.state));
};

This will allow you to execute code to grab the contents of the URL and manually update your UI to reflect the previously persisted data.

Community
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Jim Buck
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  • I've updated my answer, is that more along the functionality you need? – Jim Buck Mar 18 '15 at 18:41
  • Good idea. I could actually save the response and re-run like if I have just received it again. Any SEO implications you are aware of? – clod986 Mar 18 '15 at 19:08
  • Anything generated from javascript is best considered as not seen by crawlers. Technically you wouldn't want them to see it, since they had to fill out a form and send an HTTP request anyways. Crawlers don't fill out forms. – Jim Buck Mar 18 '15 at 19:17
  • I found the answer to the SEO question [on this page](http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/56715/do-pushstate-and-popstate-affect-seo) – clod986 Mar 19 '15 at 10:17
  • Excellent, best of luck to you! – Jim Buck Mar 19 '15 at 12:51