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assign

The method

assign()

accomplishes the same thing:

location.assign(“http://www.wrox.com”);

Either way is fine, but most developers use

location.href

because it more accurately represents the

intent of the code.

If you don’t want the page containing the script to be accessible in the browser history, you can use the

replace()

method. This method does the same thing as

assign()

, but it takes the extra step of remov-

ing the page containing the script from history, making it inaccessible using the browser Back and

Forward buttons. Try it for yourself:

<html>

<head>

</head>

<body>

<p>Enjoy this page for a second, because you won’t be coming back here.</p>

setTimeout(function () {

location.replace(“http://www.wrox.com/”);

}, 1000);

</script>

</body>

</html>

Load this page in your browser, wait for it to navigate to the new page, and then try hitting the Back

button.

The location object also has a method called

reload()

that reloads the current page. The two modes for

reload()

reload from the browser cache or reload from the server. Which of these two modes is used

depends on the value of one argument:

false

to load from cache;

true

to load from the server (if the

argument is omitted, it is considered

false

So, to reload from the server, you use this code:

location.reload(true);

To reload from the cache, you can use either of these lines:

location.reload(false);

location.reload();

The final method of the

location

object is

toString()

, which simply returns the value of

location.href

. Therefore, the following two lines of code are equal:

Any code located after a

reload()

call may or may not be executed, depending on

factors such as network latency and system resources. For this reason, it is best to

have

reload()

as the last line of code.

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