What s the difference between window location and document location in JavaScript

Question

Should both of them reference the same object

User · Answer

Interestingly  if you have a frame  image  or form named  location   then  document location  provides a reference to the frame window  image  or form  respectively  instead of the Location object  Apparently  this is because the document forms  document images  and window frames collection name lookup gets priority over the mapping to window location    lt img name  location  src  location png  gt   if  document location tagName     IMG   alert  Hello

User · Answer

Actually I notice a difference in chrome between both   For example if you want to do a navigation to a sandboxed frame from a child frame then you can do this just with document location but not with window location

User · Answer

window location is the more reliably consistent of the two  considering older browsers

User · Answer

document location constructor     window location constructor is true   It s because it s exactly the same object as you can see from document location   window location   So there s no need to compare the constructor or any other property

User · Answer

I would say window location is the more reliable way of getting the current URL   Following is the difference between the window location and document url that came in front in one of the scenarios where I was appending hash parameters in the URL and reading it later   After adding hash parameters in the URL   In an older browser  I was not able to get the hash parameters from the URL by using document url  but when I used window location then I was able to get the hash parameters from the URL   So it s always better to use window location

User · Answer

Yes  they are the same   It s one of the many historical quirks in the browser JS API   Try doing   window location     document location

User · Answer

Well yea  they are the same  but       window location is not working on some Internet Explorer browsers

User · Answer

The canonical way to get the current location object is window location  see this MSDN page from 1996 and the W3C draft from 2006    Compare this to document location  which originally only returned the current URL as a string  see this page on MSDN   Probably to avoid confusion  document location was replaced with document URL  see here on MSDN   which is also part of DOM Level 1   As far as I know  all modern browsers map document location to window location  but I still prefer window location as that s what I ve used since I wrote my first DHTML

User · Answer

window location is read write on all compliant browsers   document location is read-only in Internet Explorer  at least   but read write in Gecko-based browsers  Firefox  SeaMonkey

User · Answer

As far as I know  Both are same  For cross browser safety you can use window location rather than document location   All modern browsers map document location to window location  but I still prefer window location as that s what I ve used since I wrote my first web page  it is more consistent   you can also see document location     window location returns true  which clarifies that both are same

User · Answer

document location was originally a read-only property  although Gecko browsers allow you to assign to it as well  For cross-browser safety  use window location instead   Read more    document location    window location

User · Answer

According to the W3C  they are the same  In reality  for cross browser safety  you should use window location rather than document location   See  http   www w3 org TR html browsers html dom-location

User · Answer

Despite of most people recommend here  that is how Google Analytics s dynamic protocol snipped looked like for ages  before they moved from ga js to analytics js recently    ga src     https      document location protocol    https   ssl     http   www       google-analytics com ga js     More info  https   developers google com analytics devguides collection gajs   In new version they used      so browser can automatically add protocol      www google-analytics com analytics js    So if Google prefers document location to window location when they need protocol in JS  I guess they have some reasons for that   OVERALL  I personally believe that document location and window location are the same  but if giant with biggest stats about usage of browsers like Google using document location  I recommend to follow them

User · Answer

It s rare to see the difference nowadays because html 5 don t support framesets anymore  But back at the time we have frameset  document location would redirect only the frame in which code is being executed  and window location would redirect the entire page

User · Answer

document location     window location returns true  also  document location constructor     window location constructor is true  Note  Just tested on   Firefox 3 6  Opera 10 and IE6

User · Answer

At least in IE  it has a little difference on local file   document URL will return       file   C  projects abc a html   but window location href will return       file    C  projects abc a html   One is back slash  one is forward slash

[javascript] What's the difference between window.location and document.location in JavaScript?

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