Relative URL containing just the querystring

html url query-string
Ross McNab picture Ross McNab · Mar 8, 2013 · Viewed 16.5k times · Source

I have some links in a page which only need to change the querystring portion of the current URL.

E.g. the current page is:

http://demo.com/bigreport?page=13

and I want to link to

http://demo.com/bigreport?page=14

Can I use <a href="?page=14">Next</a> as a relative link for this?

I was surprised to find it works in Chrome. I've never seen it documented or mentioned anywhere, so I'm keen to know if anyone uses this, and if there is wider browser support.

Answer

Ross McNab picture Ross McNab · Mar 8, 2013

Further research reveals that <a href="?page=14">Next</a> is a valid relative URL.

It's documented as part of WHATWG's URL spec http://url.spec.whatwg.org/#relative-state

The new URL will inherit the base URL's scheme, host, port and path.

Tested to work on:

  • Chrome
  • IE 7

Related questions

How can I remove the query string from the url after the page loads?

I have a URL with a long query string attached to it. After the page loads, I do not require the query string. So I want to remove the query string from the address bar without a page reload. I …

Read More
What characters must be escaped in an HTTP query string?

This question concerns the characters in the query string portion of the URL, which appear after the ? mark character. Per Wikipedia, certain characters are left as is and others are encoded (usually with a % escape sequence). I've been trying to …

Read More
How to remove x and y on submit in HTML form with Image type button?

I have created a form in my application as follows: <form action="/search/" method="get"> <input id="search-box" name="search" type="text" size=30 title="Search" value="" /> <input id="search-submit" type="image" alt="Search" src="/images/…

Read More