What are the differences between history.pushState & location.hash?

Krueger picture Krueger · Feb 18, 2012 · Viewed 33.7k times · Source

I'm trying to update the URL using window.location.hash or history.pushState.

What are the differences and advantages of each method?

Answer

Rob W picture Rob W · Feb 18, 2012

location.hash has a better support than the history.pushState method.

The advantage of the pushState method is that you can bind a state to the history entry.

If you don't need this state object, I recommend to use the location.hash property, to have better compatibility with older browsers.

location.hash = 'new-hash';
console.log(history.state); // null or undefined

history.pushState({extraData: "some state info"}, '', 'new-hash'); //<---
console.log(history.state); // [object Object] = {"extraData": "some state info"}