Get current URL in web browser

JavaScript provides you many methods to retrieve and change the current URL which is displayed in browser's address bar. All these methods uses the Location object, which is a property of the Window object. You can create a new Location object that has the current URL as follows:

var currentLocation = window.location;

Basic Structure of a URL

<protocol>//<hostname>:<port>/<pathname><search><hash>

1. Protocol -- Specifies the protocol name be used to access the resource on the Internet. (HTTP (without SSL) or HTTPS (with SSL))

2. hostname -- Host name specifies the host that owns the resource. For example, www.stackoverflow.com. A server provides services using the name of the host.

3. port -- A port number used to recognize a specific process to which an Internet or other network message is to be forwarded when it arrives at a server.

4. pathname -- The path gives info about the specific resource within the host that the Web client wants to access. For example, /index.html.

5. query -- A query string follows the path component, and provides a string of information that the resource can utilize for some purpose (for example, as parameters for a search or as data to be processed).

6. hash -- The anchor portion of a URL, includes the hash sign (#).

With these Location object properties you can access all of these URL components

1. hash - Sets or returns the anchor portion of a URL.
2. host - Sets or returns the hostname and port of a URL.
3. hostname - Sets or returns the hostname of a URL.
4. href - Sets or returns the entire URL.
5. pathname - Sets or returns the path name of a URL.
6. port - Sets or returns the port number the server uses for a URL.
7. protocol - Sets or returns the protocol of a URL.
8. search - Sets or returns the query portion of a URL

I Hope you got your answer..

The same question has been asked less than 24 hours ago. To quote myself:

Use window.location for read and write access to the location object associated with the current frame. If you just want to get the address as a read-only string, you may use document.URL, which should contain the same value as window.location.href.

Gets the current page URL:

window.location.href

Use: window.location.href.

As noted above, document.URL doesn't update when updating window.location. See MDN.

To get the path, you can use:

alert("Url  ="+document.location);
alert("PathName  ="+ window.location.pathname);// Returns path only
alert("url  ="+window.location.href);// Returns full URL

• Use window.location.href to get the complete URL.
• Use window.location.pathname to get URL leaving the host.

var currentPageUrlIs = "";
if (typeof this.href != "undefined") {
       currentPageUrlIs = this.href.toString().toLowerCase(); 
}else{ 
       currentPageUrlIs = document.location.toString().toLowerCase();
}

The above code can also help someone

For complete URL with query strings:

document.location.toString().toLowerCase();

For host URL:

window.location

Way to get the current location object is window.location

Compare this to document.location, which originally only returned the current URL as a string. Probably to avoid confusion, document.location was replaced with document.URL.

And, all modern browsers map document.location to window.location.

In reality, for cross browser safety, you should use window.location rather than document.location.

You can get current url location with hash tag by using :

JavaScript :

 //using href
 var URL = window.location.href;
 //using path
 var URL = window.location.pathname;

Jquery :

$(location).attr('href');

In jstl we can access current url path using pageContext.request.contextPath, If you want to do a ajax call, use following url.

  url = "${pageContext.request.contextPath}" + "/controller/path"

Ex: in the page http://stackoverflow.com/posts/36577223 this will give http://stackoverflow.com/controller/path