Ajax with history.pushState and popstate - what do I do when popstate state property is null?

Question

I'm trying out the HTML5 history API with ajax loading of content.

I've got a bunch of test pages connected by relative links. I have this JS, which handles clicks on those links. When a link is clicked the handler grabs its href attribute and passes it to ajaxLoadPage(), which loads content from the requested page into the content area of the current page. (My PHP pages are set up to return a full HTML page if you request them normally, but only a chunk of content if ?fragment=true is appended to the URL of the request.)

Then my click handler calls history.pushState() to display the URL in the address bar and add it to the browser history.

$(document).ready(function(){

    var content = $('#content');

    var ajaxLoadPage = function (url) {
        console.log('Loading ' + url + ' fragment');
        content.load(url + '?fragment=true');
    }

    // Handle click event of all links with href not starting with http, https or #
    $('a').not('[href^=http], [href^=https], [href^=#]').on('click', function(e){

        e.preventDefault();
        var href = $(this).attr('href');
        ajaxLoadPage(href);
        history.pushState({page:href}, null, href);

    });

    // This mostly works - only problem is when popstate happens and state is null
    // e.g. when we try to go back to the initial page we loaded normally
    $(window).bind('popstate', function(event){
        console.log('Popstate');
        var state = event.originalEvent.state;
        console.log(state);
        if (state !== null) {
            if (state.page !== undefined) {
                ajaxLoadPage(state.page);
            }
        }
    });

});

When you add URLs to the history with pushState you also need to include an event handler for the popstate event to deal with clicks on the back or forward buttons. (If you don't do this, clicking back shows the URL you pushed to history in the address bar, but the page isn't updated.) So my popstate handler grabs the URL saved in the state property of each entry I created, and passes it to ajaxLoadPage to load the appropriate content.

This works OK for pages my click handler added to the history. But what happens with pages the browser added to history when I requested them "normally"? Say I land on my first page normally and then navigate through my site with clicks that do that ajax loading - if I then try to go back through the history to that first page, the last click shows the URL for the first page, but doesn't load the page in the browser. Why is that?

I can sort of see this has something to do with the state property of that last popstate event. The state property is null for that event, because it's only entries added to the history by pushState() or replaceState() that can give it a value. But my first loading of the page was a "normal" request - how come the browser doesn't just step back and load the initial URL normally?

score 15 · Answer 1 · edited May 21 '14 at 20:39

15

This is an older question but there is a much simpler answer using native javascript for this issue.

For the initial state you should not be using history.pushState but rather history.replaceState.

All arguments are the same for both methods with the only difference is that pushState creates a NEW history record and thus is the source of your problem. replaceState only replaces the state of that history record and will behave as expected, that is go back to the initial starting page.

edited May 21 '14 at 20:39

msturdy

9,343
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answered May 21 '14 at 20:19

Matt

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This was so totally the answer to my problem. When you first come to the page, and use ajax to load it, you need to replace the first state using this one. Thanks! – user1689571 Feb 05 '16 at 02:29

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 29 '13 at 12:37

I ran into the same issue as the original question. This line

var initialPop = !popped && location.href == initialURL;

should be changed to

var initialPop = !popped;

This is sufficient to catch the initial pop. Then you do not need to add the original page to the pushState. i.e. remove the following:

var home = 'index.html';
history.pushState({page:home}, null, home);

The final code based on AJAX tabs (and using Mootools):

if ( this.supports_history_api() ) {
    var popped = ('state' in window.history && window.history.state !== null)
    ,   changeTabBack = false;

    window.addEvent('myShowTabEvent', function ( url ) {
       if ( url && !changingTabBack )
           setLocation(url);
       else
           changingTabBack = false;
       //Make sure you do not add to the pushState after clicking the back button
    });

   window.addEventListener("popstate", function(e) {
       var initialPop = !popped;
       popped = true;
       if ( initialPop )
           return;

       var tabLink = $$('a[href="' + location.pathname + '"][data-toggle*=tab]')[0];
       if ( tabLink ) {
           changingTabBack = true;
           tabLink.tab('show');
       }
   });
}

Great! Nice answer Erin. – And Finally Nov 29 '13 at 12:41 — And Finally, Nov 29 '13 at 12:41

And Finally · Accepted Answer · 2013-01-09T12:21:01.760

I still don't understand why the back button behaves like this - I'd have thought the browser would be happy to step back to an entry that was created by a normal request. Maybe when you insert other entries with pushState the history stops behaving in the normal way. But I found a way to make my code work better. You can't always depend on the state property containing the URL you want to step back to. But stepping back through history changes the URL in the address bar as you would expect, so it may be more reliable to load your content based on window.location. Following this great example I've changed my popstate handler so it loads content based on the URL in the address bar instead of looking for a URL in the state property.

One thing you have to watch out for is that some browsers (like Chrome) fire a popstate event when you initially hit a page. When this happens you're liable to reload your initial page's content unnecessarily. So I've added some bits of code from the excellent pjax to ignore that initial pop.

$(document).ready(function(){

    // Used to detect initial (useless) popstate.
    // If history.state exists, pushState() has created the current entry so we can
    // assume browser isn't going to fire initial popstate
    var popped = ('state' in window.history && window.history.state !== null), initialURL = location.href;

    var content = $('#content');

    var ajaxLoadPage = function (url) {

        console.log('Loading ' + url + ' fragment');
        content.load(url + '?fragment=true');

    }

    // Handle click event of all links with href not starting with http, https or #
    $('a').not('[href^=http], [href^=https], [href^=#]').on('click', function(e){

        e.preventDefault();
        var href = $(this).attr('href');
        ajaxLoadPage(href);
        history.pushState({page:href}, null, href);

    });

    $(window).bind('popstate', function(event){

        // Ignore inital popstate that some browsers fire on page load
        var initialPop = !popped && location.href == initialURL;
        popped = true;
        if (initialPop) return;

        console.log('Popstate');

        // By the time popstate has fired, location.pathname has been changed
        ajaxLoadPage(location.pathname);

    });

});

One improvement you could make to this JS is only to attach the click event handler if the browser supports the history API.

It works grate with one little issue, if you hit page reload, it will load only ajax portion of the page. I would like to hear if anyone have solution for page reload. — Hydrino, Oct 03 '14 at 01:07
@Hydrino Push the state with the right URL and load the part page with AJAX. — Praveen Kumar Purushothaman, Nov 04 '14 at 12:45

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 08 '13 at 21:02

I actually found myself with a similar need today and found the code you provided to be very useful. I came to the same problem you did, and I believe all that you're missing is pushing your index file or home page to the history in the same manner that you are all subsequent pages.

Here is an example of what I did to resolve this (not sure if it's the RIGHT answer, but it's simple and it works!):

var home = 'index.html';
history.pushState({page:home}, null, home);

Hope this helps!

Thanks mattblac, I found another way of doing it which might be more flexible, I'll post it here. — And Finally, Jan 09 '13 at 11:59

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 17 '15 at 14:12

I realize this is an old question, but when trying to manage state easily like this, it might be better to take the following approach:

$(window).on('popstate',function(e){
    var state = e.originalEvent.state;
    if(state != null){
        if(state.hasOwnProperty('window')){
            //callback on window
            window[state.window].call(window,state);
        }
    }
});

in this way, you can specify an optional callback function on the state object when adding to history, then when popstate is trigger, this function would be called with the state object as a parameter.

function pushState(title,url,callback)
{
    var state = {
        Url : url,
        Title : title,
    };
    if(window[callback] && typeof window[callback] === 'function')
    {
        state.callback = callback;
    }
    history.pushState(state,state.Title,state.Url);
}

You could easily extend this to suit your needs.

score 0 · Answer 6 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:25

And Finally says:

I'd have thought the browser would be happy to step back to an entry that was created by a normal request.

I found an explanation of that strange browser's behavior here. The explanation is

you should save the state when your site is loaded the first time and thereafter every time it changes state

I tested this - it works.

It means there is no need in loading your content based on window.location.

I hope I don't mislead.

Ajax with history.pushState and popstate - what do I do when popstate state property is null?

6 Answers6

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