I need to monitor when the user moves away from a page (to a different site not the same site) or closes the window/tab. I can achieve that with $(window).bind('unload', function() {}); but onload is a catch-all event: it also catches page refresh and navigating to a different page on the same website. How can I detect those two events (page refresh and navigating to another page in the same website) using javascript/jQuery please?

I need to monitor when the user moves away from a page (to a different site not the same site) or closes the window/tab. I can achieve that with $(window).bind('unload', function() {}); but onload is a catch-all event: it also catches page refresh and navigating to a different page on the same website. How can I detect those two events (page refresh and navigating to another page in the same website) using javascript/jQuery please?

• javascript
• jquery
• onbeforeunload

2 Answers 2

I think that isn't possible, I don't know such an event.

A possible solution is to pare the current url with the destination url but that's not possible because of security and privacy reasons see:

How can i get the destination url in javascript onbeforeunload event?

On each page,

var leaving = true;

$(function() {
    $('a[rel!=ext]').click(function () { leaving = false; });
    $('form').submit(function () { leaving = false; });
});

$(function() { window.onbeforeunload = unloadPage; });

function unloadPage() {
    if(leaving) {
        // Put your logic here
    }
}

Then just make sure that all links to external sites have a rel="ext" attribute.