How do I refresh a page using JavaScript?

Question

How do I refresh a page using JavaScript?

Answer 1

Use location.reload().

For example, to reload whenever an element with id="something" is clicked:

$('#something').click(function() {
    location.reload();
});

The reload() function takes an optional parameter that can be set to true to force a reload from the server rather than the cache. The parameter defaults to false, so by default the page may reload from the browser's cache.

Answer 2

There are multiple unlimited ways to refresh a page with JavaScript:

1. location.reload()
2. history.go(0)
3. location.href = location.href
4. location.href = location.pathname
5. location.replace(location.pathname)

6. location.reload(false)

   If we needed to pull the document from the web-server again (such as where the document contents change dynamically) we would pass the argument as true.

You can continue the list being creative:

• window.location = window.location
• window.self.window.self.window.window.location = window.location
• ...and other 534 ways

var methods = [
  "location.reload()",
  "history.go(0)",
  "location.href = location.href",
  "location.href = location.pathname",
  "location.replace(location.pathname)",
  "location.reload(false)"
];

var $body = $("body");
for (var i = 0; i < methods.length; ++i) {
  (function(cMethod) {
    $body.append($("<button>", {
      text: cMethod
    }).on("click", function() {
      eval(cMethod); // don't blame me for using eval
    }));
  })(methods[i]);
}

button {
  background: #2ecc71;
  border: 0;
  color: white;
  font-weight: bold;
  font-family: "Monaco", monospace;
  padding: 10px;
  border-radius: 4px;
  cursor: pointer;
  transition: background-color 0.5s ease;
  margin: 2px;
}
button:hover {
  background: #27ae60;
}

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

Answer 3

This works on all browsers:

location.reload();

Answer 4

Lots of ways will work, I suppose:

• window.location.reload();
• history.go(0);
• window.location.href=window.location.href;

Answer 5

If you're using jQuery and you want to refresh the contents of a page asynchronously, then you can do the following:

$.ajax({
    url: "",
    context: document.body,
    success: function(s,x){
        $(this).html(s);
    }
});

The approach here that I used was Ajax jQuery. I tested it on Chrome 13. Then I put the code in the handler that will trigger the reload. The URL is "", which means this page.

Note that this may not be what the asker meant by "refresh". Generally, in common usage, that term refers to reloading the page in the way that the browser would do if the user clicked the "Refresh/reload" button provided in the browser's user interface. However, this is not the only possible meaning of "refresh", and it may be preferred in a specific circumstance.

What this code does is get new and updated content to the page. It does this by making an asynchronous HTTP request for the new content, and then replacing the page's current content with the new asynchronously-loaded content. It has the result of refreshing the contents of the page, even though it works slightly differently.

You'll have to choose which one you actually want, and which works best for your specific use-case.

Answer 6

If the current page was loaded by a POST request, you may want to use

window.location = window.location.pathname;

instead of

window.location.reload();

because window.location.reload() will prompt for confirmation if called on a page that was loaded by a POST request.

Answer 7

You're spoiled for choice; any of the following work:

• window.location.href = window.location.href;
• window.location.reload();
• history.go(0);

Answer 8

You may want to use

location.reload(forceGet)

forceGet is a boolean and optional.

The default is false which reloads the page from the cache.

Set this parameter to true if you want to force the browser to get the page from the server to get rid of the cache as well.

Or just

location.reload()

if you want quick and easy with caching.

Answer 9

Three approaches with different cache-related behaviours:

• location.reload(true)

  In browsers that implement the forcedReload parameter of location.reload(), reloads by fetching a fresh copy of the page and all of its resources (scripts, stylesheets, images, etc.). Will not serve any resources from the cache - gets fresh copies from the server without sending any if-modified-since or if-none-match headers in the request.

  Equivalent to the user doing a "hard reload" in browsers where that's possible.

  Note that passing true to location.reload() is supported in Firefox (see MDN) and Internet Explorer (see MSDN) but is not supported universally and is not part of the W3 HTML 5 spec, nor the W3 draft HTML 5.1 spec, nor the WHATWG HTML Living Standard.

  In unsupporting browsers, like Google Chrome, location.reload(true) behaves the same as location.reload().

• location.reload() or location.reload(false)

  Reloads the page, fetching a fresh, non-cached copy of the page HTML itself, and performing RFC 7234 revalidation requests for any resources (like scripts) that the browser has cached, even if they are fresh are RFC 7234 permits the browser to serve them without revalidation.

  Exactly how the browser should utilise its cache when performing a location.reload() call isn't specified or documented as far as I can tell; I determined the behaviour above by experimentation.

  This is equivalent to the user simply pressing the "refresh" button in their browser.

• location = location (or infinitely many other possible techniques that involve assigning to location or to its properties)

  Only works if the page's URL doesn't contain a fragid/hashbang!

  Reloads the page without refetching or revalidating any fresh resources from the cache. If the page's HTML itself is fresh, this will reload the page without performing any HTTP requests at all.

  This is equivalent (from a caching perspective) to the user opening the page in a new tab.

  However, if the page's URL contains a hash, this will have no effect.

  Again, the caching behaviour here is unspecified as far as I know; I determined it by testing.

So, in summary, you want to use:

• location = location for maximum use of the cache, as long as the page doesn't have a hash in its URL, in which case this won't work
• location.reload(true) to fetch new copies of all resources without revalidating (although it's not universally supported and will behave no differently to location.reload() in some browsers, like Chrome)
• location.reload() to faithfully reproduce the effect of the user clicking the 'refresh' button.

Answer 10

window.location.reload() will reload from the server and will load all your data, scripts, images, etc. again.

So if you just want to refresh the HTML, the window.location = document.URL will return much quicker and with less traffic. But it will not reload the page if there is a hash (#) in the URL.

Answer 11

The jQuery Load function can also perform a page refresh:

$('body').load('views/file.html', function () {
    $(this).fadeIn(5000);
});

Answer 12

As the question is generic, let's try to sum up possible solutions for the answer:

Simple plain JavaScript Solution:

The easiest way is a one line solution placed in an appropriate way:

location.reload();

What many people are missing here, because they hope to get some "points" is that the reload() function itself offers a Boolean as a parameter (details: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Location/reload).

The Location.reload() method reloads the resource from the current URL. Its optional unique parameter is a Boolean, which, when it is true, causes the page to always be reloaded from the server. If it is false or not specified, the browser may reload the page from its cache.

This means there are two ways:

Solution1: Force reloading the current page from the server

location.reload(true);

Solution2: Reloading from cache or server (based on browser and your config)

location.reload(false);
location.reload();

And if you want to combine it with jQuery an listening to an event, I would recommend using the ".on()" method instead of ".click" or other event wrappers, e.g. a more proper solution would be:

$('#reloadIt').on('eventXyZ', function() {
    location.reload(true);
});

Answer 13

Here is a solution that asynchronously reloads a page using jQuery. It avoids the flicker caused by window.location = window.location. This example shows a page that reloads continuously, as in a dashboard. It is battle-tested and is running on an information display TV in Times Square.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    ...
    <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="300">
    <script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.2.3/jquery.min.js"></script>
    <script>
    function refresh() {
      $.ajax({
        url: "",
        dataType: "text",
        success: function(html) {
          $('#fu').replaceWith($.parseHTML(html));
          setTimeout(refresh,2000);
        }
      });
    }
    refresh();
    </script>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id="fu">
      ...
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

Notes:

• Using $.ajax directly like $.get('',function(data){$(document.body).html(data)}) causes css/js files to get cache-busted, even if you use cache: true, that's why we use parseHTML
• parseHTML will NOT find a body tag so your whole body needs to go in an extra div, I hope this nugget of knowledge helps you one day, you can guess how we chose the id for that div
• Use http-equiv="refresh" just in case something goes wrong with javascript/server hiccup, then the page will STILL reload without you getting a phone call
• This approach probably leaks memory somehow, the http-equiv refresh fixes that

Answer 14

I found

window.location.href = "";

or

window.location.href = null;

also makes a page refresh.

This makes it very much easier to reload the page removing any hash. This is very nice when I am using AngularJS in the iOS simulator, so that I don't have to rerun the app.

Answer 15

You can use JavaScript location.reload() method. This method accepts a boolean parameter. true or false. If the parameter is true; the page always reloaded from the server. If it is false; which is the default or with empty parameter browser reload the page from it's cache.

With true parameter

<button type="button" onclick="location.reload(true);">Reload page</button>

With default/ false parameter

 <button type="button" onclick="location.reload();">Reload page</button>

Using jquery

<button id="Reloadpage">Reload page</button>
<script type="text/javascript">
    $('#Reloadpage').click(function() {
        location.reload();
    }); 
</script>

Answer 16

If you are using jQuery and want to refresh, then try adding your jQuery in a javascript function:

I wanted to hide an iframe from a page when clicking oh an h3, for me it worked but I wasn't able to click the item that allowed me to view the iframe to begin with unless I refreshed the browser manually...not ideal.

I tried the following:

var hide = () => {
    $("#frame").hide();//jQuery
    location.reload(true);//javascript
};

Mixing plain Jane javascript with your jQuery should work.

// code where hide (where location.reload was used)function was integrated, below    
    iFrameInsert = () => {
        var file = `Fe1FVoW0Nt4`;
        $("#frame").html(`<iframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/${file}\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen></iframe><h3>Close Player</h3>`);
        $("h3").enter code hereclick(hide);
}

// View Player 
$("#id-to-be-clicked").click(iFrameInsert);

Answer 17

You can write it in two ways. 1st is the standard way of reloading the page also called as simple refresh

location.reload(); //simple refresh

And another is called the hard refresh. Here you pass the boolean expression and set it to true. This will reload the page destroying the older cache and displaying the contents from scratch.

location.reload(true);//hard refresh

Answer 18

Probably shortest (12 chars) - use history

history.go()

Answer 19

It is shortest in JavaScript.

window.location = '';

Answer 20

You can simply use location.reload().

document.querySelector("button").addEventListener("mousedown", function () {
  location.reload(); // reloads the page
}, false);

* {
  margin: 0px;
  padding: 0px;
}

button {
  background-color: #90ffc9;
  border: 1px solid #000000;
  border-radius: 4px;
  outline: none;
  padding: 1%;
  top: 50%;
  left: 50%;
  position: absolute;
  transform: translate(-50%, -50%);
  transition: background-color 350ms;
}
button:hover {
  background-color: #80af99;
  cursor: pointer;
}

<button>
  Reload
</button>