i belive it is quite simple question.

I am making an ajax call with jquery and all that i want is to set custom hash after the call similar to this:

window.location.hash = '?url=';

but it returns # symbol before that and i dont want it

www.mysitename/#?url=

so basically how to remove that # symbol and attach a clean hash without it?

Thank you.

i belive it is quite simple question.

I am making an ajax call with jquery and all that i want is to set custom hash after the call similar to this:

window.location.hash = '?url=http://www.sitename.';

but it returns # symbol before that and i dont want it

www.mysitename./#?url=http://www.sitename.

so basically how to remove that # symbol and attach a clean hash without it?

Thank you.

• php
• javascript
• hash
• window.location

• 1 You want to set the hash without a hash? That is not possible. The hash is part of the hash, hence the word hash (actually it is the fragment identifier, but no one seems to care). (too much hashes here...) – Felix Kling Commented Jan 31, 2011 at 23:39
• as long as there are only too many hashes but not too much hashish.. ;) – ThiefMaster Commented Jan 31, 2011 at 23:46

2 Answers 2

You cannot. If you want to set a query string (the ?something=something stuff) you have to set it (and by doing so cause a page reload) by changing location.search (only the query string) or location.href - nothing AJAXish/Web2.0ish ;)

The hash is the client-side part after the # sign and never sent to the server. It's purely meant to target page elements (for example a <h2 id="something"> is targeted by the hash #something) and nowadays to keep state information in the URL so the back/forward buttons keep working in AJAX applications (even though that'll eventually be replaced with HTML5's pushState function).

If you still want to use the hash, please do so in a google-patible way. Basically it means you should use #!something in the hash where something could also be part of the real URL in a classical (non-AJAX) request.

The hash in a URL is, per the MDC docs:

the part of the URL that follows the # symbol, including the # symbol.

Note that the # character (which I believe is called the "pound sign" in North America) is generally called the "hash".

You want to set window.location.search instead. This is:

the part of the URL that follows the ? symbol, including the ? symbol.

Note that this triggers a reload. If you don't want this, you need to use the hash property.