[javascript] How to extract the hostname portion of a URL in JavaScript

Is there a really easy way to start from a full URL:

document.location.href = "http://aaa.bbb.ccc.com/asdf/asdf/sadf.aspx?blah"

And extract just the host part:

aaa.bbb.ccc.com

There's gotta be a JavaScript function that does this reliably, but I can't find it.

My solution works in all web browsers including Microsoft Internet Explorer and doesn't use any regular expression, it's inspired of Noah Cardoza and Martin Konecny solutions:

function getHostname(href) {
    if (typeof URL === 'object') {
        // workaround for MS IE 11 (Noah Cardoza's solution but without using Object.assign())
        var dummyNode = document.createElement('a');
        dummyNode.href = href;
        return dummyNode.hostname;
    } else {
        // Martin Konecny's solution
        return new URL(href).hostname;
    }
}

Use document.location object and its host or hostname properties.

alert(document.location.hostname); // alerts "stackoverflow.com"

You could concatenate the location protocol and the host:

var root = location.protocol + '//' + location.host;

For a url, let say 'http://stackoverflow.com/questions', it will return 'http://stackoverflow.com'

There are two ways. The first is a variant of another answer here, but this one accounts for non-default ports:

function getRootUrl() {
  var defaultPorts = {"http:":80,"https:":443};

  return window.location.protocol + "//" + window.location.hostname
   + (((window.location.port)
    && (window.location.port != defaultPorts[window.location.protocol]))
    ? (":"+window.location.port) : "");
}

But I prefer this simpler method (which works with any URI string):

function getRootUrl(url) {
  return url.toString().replace(/^(.*\/\/[^\/?#]*).*$/,"$1");
}

Check this:

alert(window.location.hostname);

this will return host name as www.domain.com

and:

window.location.host

will return domain name with port like www.example.com:80

For complete reference check Mozilla developer site.

use

window.location.origin

and for: "http://aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd.com/sadf.aspx?blah"

you will get: http://aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd.com/

I would like to specify something. If someone want to get the whole url with path like I need, can use:

var fullUrl = window.location.protocol + "//" + window.location.hostname + window.location.pathname;

Regex provides much more flexibility.

    //document.location.href = "http://aaa.bbb.ccc.com/asdf/asdf/sadf.aspx?blah
    //1.
     var r = new RegExp(/http:\/\/[^/]+/);
     var match = r.exec(document.location.href) //gives http://aaa.bbb.ccc.com

    //2. 
     var r = new RegExp(/http:\/\/[^/]+\/[^/]+/);
     var match = r.exec(document.location.href) //gives http://aaa.bbb.ccc.com/asdf

There is another hack I use and never saw in any StackOverflow response : using "src" attribute of an image will yield the complete base path of your site. For instance :

var dummy = new Image;
dummy.src = '$';                  // using '' will fail on some browsers
var root = dummy.src.slice(0,-1); // remove trailing '$'

On an URL like http://domain.com/somesite/index.html, root will be set to http://domain.com/somesite/. This also works for localhost or any valid base URL.

Note that this will cause a failed HTTP request on the $ dummy image. You can use an existing image instead to avoid this, with only slight code changes.

Another variant uses a dummy link, with no side effect on HTTP requests :

var dummy = document.createElement ('a');
dummy.href = '';
var root = dummy.href;

I did not test it on every browser, though.

Try

document.location.host

or

document.location.hostname

The accepted answer didn't work for me since wanted to be able to work with any arbitary url's, not just the current page URL.

Take a look at the URL object:

var url = new URL("http://aaa.bbb.ccc.com/asdf/asdf/sadf.aspx?blah");
url.protocol;  // "http:"
url.hostname;  // "aaa.bbb.ccc.com"
url.pathname;  // "/asdf/asdf/sadf.aspx"
url.search;    // "?blah"

I know this is a bit late, but I made a clean little function with a little ES6 syntax

function getHost(href){
  return Object.assign(document.createElement('a'), { href }).host;
}

It could also be writen in ES5 like

function getHost(href){
  return Object.assign(document.createElement('a'), { href: href }).host;
}

Of course IE doesn't support Object.assign, but in my line of work, that doesn't matter.