hashchange

The hashchange event is fired when the fragment identifier of the URL has changed (the part of the URL that follows the # symbol, including the # symbol).

Properties

There are several fallback scripts listed on this page. Basically those scripts check the location.hash at a regular interval. Here is a version that allows only one handler to be bound to the window.onhashchange property:

;(function(window) {

  // exit if the browser implements that event
  if ("onhashchange" in window) { return; }

  var location = window.location,
    oldURL = location.href,
    oldHash = location.hash;

  // check the location hash on a 100ms interval
  setInterval(function() {
    var newURL = location.href,
      newHash = location.hash;

    // if the hash has changed and a handler has been bound...
    if (newHash != oldHash && typeof window.onhashchange === "function") {
      // execute the handler
      window.onhashchange({
        type: "hashchange",
        oldURL: oldURL,
        newURL: newURL
      });

      oldURL = newURL;
      oldHash = newHash;
    }
  }, 100);

})(window);

Specifications

Browser compatibility

We're converting our compatibility data into a machine-readable JSON format. This compatibility table still uses the old format, because we haven't yet converted the data it contains. Find out how you can help!

[1] Support for the oldURL/newURL attributes added in Firefox 6.

[2] oldURL/newURL attributes are not supported.

See also

• popstate
• WindowEventHandlers.onhashchange