Embedding JavaScript objects in a page's URL

Question

I\'m trying to store a JavaScript object in the URL of a web page (as a JSON string), but the URL contains some characters that will not work with HTML links.

On thi

Answer 1

You need to encode and decode with JSON

var link = document.getElementsByTagName('a')[0];
link.addEventListener('click', function(){
    // this could also be done with location.hash = JSON.stringify(...);
    var param = JSON.stringify(['your', 'array']),
        href = '#'+this.getAttribute('href');
    href += param;
    location.href = href;
}, false);


// make string an object/array again
var obj = JSON.parse(window.location.hash.substr(1));

Answer 2

You can put a JSON string in an URL by URL-encoding it before putting it in the URL:

encodeURIComponent(JSON.stringify(object))

In your example, that would be:

http://jsfiddle.net/tsUpC/1/show/#%5B%22Hello%22%2C%22World!%22%5D

As you might guess, the opposite of encodeURIComponent is decodeURIComponent.