How to find pathname of any URL - Javascript

In this article I will share the knowledge of converting a string into URL and manipulating the properties of Uniform Resource Locator (URL).

Let's start 🚀

Scenario 1

We need current pathname from URL of the current webpage to consume it in our application.

Solution

We can get URL of the current webpage with window object. The following code gives us the location object of the current document.

console.log(window.location);

The window.location will return the following Location object as a read-only result.

{
  hash: ""
  host: "https://devbajwa.com"
  hostname: "https://devbajwa.com"
  href: "https://devbajwa.com/programming/languages/javascript/objects"
  origin: "https://devbajwa.com"
  pathname: "/programming/languages/javascript/objects"
  port: ""
  protocol: "https:"
  search: ""
}

window.location object has several properties which carries the information about the location of the current document.

Now, suppose the following URL is current document https://devbajwa.com/programming/languages/javascript/objects.

href

window.location.href gives us the absolute URL of the current document.

console.log(window.location.href)
->
"https://devbajwa.com/programming/languages/javascript/objects"

pathname

Similarly we can access the pathname with window.location.pathname property. This is also referred as relative URL.

console.log(window.location.pathname)
->
"/programming/languages/javascript/objects"

---

Scenario 2

We fetch JSON data from an API call and receive a response with an absolute URL. We need pathname of that absolute URL.

Since the response of an API call is in string format and not from the window.location object, we don't have access the location or pathname property for that string value(URL).

Example

const absoluteURL = "https://devbajwa.com/programming/languages/javascript/objects";

console.log(absoluteURL.location);
->
undefined

If we try to access location object of our custom string format URL, we will get undefined response.

Solution

We can leverage modern URL API available that accesses and manipulates URLs. The new URL(string) parses the string format URL and provides access to the integral parts through its properties.

Simply pass the string formatted URL to the new URL() function and the resulted value is a URL now. We have access to various properties.

href

const absoluteURL = new URL("https://devbajwa.com/programming/languages/javascript/objects");

console.log(absoluteURL.href);
->
"https://devbajwa.com/programming/languages/javascript/objects"

pathname

const absoluteURL = new URL("https://devbajwa.com/programming/languages/javascript/objects");

console.log(absoluteURL.pathname);
->
"/programming/languages/javascript/objects"

Codepen

Conclusion

Modern Javascript is becoming more declarative now a days. We should leverage the available modern Web APIs to make our code more readable and developer friendly. However, keep check on the browser support before use :)