[javascript] Javascript: Setting location.href versus location

When would you set location to a URL string versus setting location.href?

location = "http://www.stackoverflow.com";

vs

location.href = "http://www.stackoverflow.com";

Mozilla Developer Network Reference

A couple of years ago, location did not work for me in IE and location.href did (and both worked in other browsers). Since then I have always just used location.href and never had trouble again. I can't remember which version of IE that was.

With TypeScript use window.location.href as window.location is technically an object containing:

Properties
hash 
host 
hostname
href    <--- you need this
pathname (relative to the host)
port 
protocol 
search 

Setting window.location will produce a type error, while window.location.href is of type string.

Source

Just to clarify, you can't do location.split('#'), location is an object, not a string. But you can do location.href.split('#'); because location.href is a string.

Like as has been said already, location is an object. But that person suggested using either. But, you will do better to use the .href version.

Objects have default properties which, if nothing else is specified, they are assumed. In the case of the location object, it has a property called .href. And by not specifying ANY property during the assignment, it will assume "href" by default.

If you mean href, you should specify href.

Even if both work, I would use the latter. location is an object, and assigning a string to an object doesn't bode well for readability or maintenance.

One difference to keep in mind, though.

Let's say you want to build some URL using the current URL. The following code will in fact redirect you, because it's not calling String.replace but Location.replace:

nextUrl = window.location.replace('/step1', '/step2');

The following codes work:

// cast to string
nextUrl = (window.location+'').replace('/step1', '/step2');

// href property
nextUrl = window.location.href.replace('/step1', '/step2');