Does Android support window.location.replace or any equivalent?

Question

It seems that the Android browser doesn't properly implement window.location.replace.

In most browsers, calling window.location.replace will replace the current URL with the URL passed to it.

When the user navigates somewhere else then clicks back, they'll be returned to the URL that was passed to window.location.replace, rather than the URL that they were at before window.location.replace was called.

The Android browser doesn't seem to implement this properly.

In the Android browser, the user will be directed back to the original URL rather than the one passed to window.location.replace.

You can test this for yourself here.

So is there any alternative way to re-write history in Android? Or will I just have to live without that feature, for Android users?

Answer 1

I had the same issue and ended up with code similar to chris suggestion, but I changed the if statement to use modernizr's feature detection. If you're not using modernizr the code would look something like this:

if(!!(window.history && history.replaceState)){
   window.history.replaceState({}, document.title, base + fragment);
} else {
   location.replace(base + fragment);
}

Unless you have a specific reason for device detection, feature detection is preferred since it basically supports all devices, even future ones.

Answer 2

To make it work across all/most mobile platforms check out this link.

Shows how to handle redirect for Android, iPad and iPhone.

Android uses document.location whereas iOS supports window.location.replace

Answer 3

Will this work?

document.location.href = 'http://example.com/somePage.html';

Answer 4

You can try using the replaceState method on the history window.history

      if (((navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase().indexOf('mozilla/5.0') > -1 && navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase().indexOf('android ') > -1 && navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase().indexOf('applewebkit') > -1) && !(navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase().indexOf('chrome') > -1))) {
          window.history.replaceState({}, document.title, base + fragment);
      } else {
          location.replace(base + fragment);
      }