How do I parse a URL into hostname and path in javascript?

Question

I would like to take a string

var a = \"http://example.com/aa/bb/\"

and process it into an object such that

a.hostname == \         


        

Answer 1

Cross-browser URL parsing, works around the relative path problem for IE 6, 7, 8 and 9:

function ParsedUrl(url) {
    var parser = document.createElement("a");
    parser.href = url;

    // IE 8 and 9 dont load the attributes "protocol" and "host" in case the source URL
    // is just a pathname, that is, "/example" and not "http://domain.com/example".
    parser.href = parser.href;

    // IE 7 and 6 wont load "protocol" and "host" even with the above workaround,
    // so we take the protocol/host from window.location and place them manually
    if (parser.host === "") {
        var newProtocolAndHost = window.location.protocol + "//" + window.location.host;
        if (url.charAt(1) === "/") {
            parser.href = newProtocolAndHost + url;
        } else {
            // the regex gets everything up to the last "/"
            // /path/takesEverythingUpToAndIncludingTheLastForwardSlash/thisIsIgnored
            // "/" is inserted before because IE takes it of from pathname
            var currentFolder = ("/"+parser.pathname).match(/.*\//)[0];
            parser.href = newProtocolAndHost + currentFolder + url;
        }
    }

    // copies all the properties to this object
    var properties = ['host', 'hostname', 'hash', 'href', 'port', 'protocol', 'search'];
    for (var i = 0, n = properties.length; i < n; i++) {
      this[properties[i]] = parser[properties[i]];
    }

    // pathname is special because IE takes the "/" of the starting of pathname
    this.pathname = (parser.pathname.charAt(0) !== "/" ? "/" : "") + parser.pathname;
}

Usage (demo JSFiddle here):

var myUrl = new ParsedUrl("http://www.example.com:8080/path?query=123#fragment");

Result:

{
    hash: "#fragment"
    host: "www.example.com:8080"
    hostname: "www.example.com"
    href: "http://www.example.com:8080/path?query=123#fragment"
    pathname: "/path"
    port: "8080"
    protocol: "http:"
    search: "?query=123"
}