Change URL without refresh the page

Question

I would like to replace an url without page refresh.

I need to change:

https://example.com/en/step1

to

https://example.com/en/step2

How to do that ?

Answer 1

Update

Based on Manipulating the browser history, passing the empty string as second parameter of pushState method (aka title) should be safe against future changes to the method, so it's better to use pushState like this:

history.pushState(null, '', '/en/step2');    

You can read more about that in mentioned article

Original Answer

Use history.pushState like this:

history.pushState(null, null, '/en/step2');

• More info (MDN article): Manipulating the browser history
• Can I use
• Maybe you should take a look @ Does Internet Explorer support pushState and replaceState?

---

Update 2 to answer Idan Dagan's comment:

Why not using history.replaceState()?

From MDN

history.replaceState() operates exactly like history.pushState() except that replaceState() modifies the current history entry instead of creating a new one

That means if you use replaceState, yes the url will be changed but user can not use Browser's Back button to back to prev. state(s) anymore (because replaceState doesn't add new entry to history) and it's not recommended and provide bad UX.

Update 3 to add window.onpopstate

So, as this answer got your attention, here is additional info about manipulating the browser history, after using pushState, you can detect the back/forward button navigation by using window.onpopstate like this:

window.onpopstate = function(e) {
    // ... 
};

As the first argument of pushState is an object, if you passed an object instead of null, you can access that object in onpopstate which is very handy, here is how:

window.onpopstate = function(e) {
    if(e.state) {
        console.log(e.state);
    }
};

Update 4 to add Reading the current state:

When your page loads, it might have a non-null state object, you can read the state of the current history entry without waiting for a popstate event using the history.state property like this:

console.log(history.state);

Bonus: Use following to check history.pushState support:

if (history.pushState) {
  // \o/
}