Getting the pathname of a URL stored in a variable

Question

I'm trying to get /blog in order to put in url_pathname.

var link = 'http://www.example.com/blog';
alert(url_pathname);

if the link was 'http://www.example.com/blog/post', url_pathname would be /blog/page

I tried the following without success.

var link = 'http://www.example.com/blog';
var url_pathname = link[0].pathname;
alert(url_pathname);

Answer 1

The pathname properties are only available on the location object and link elements. Assign the string to an anchor, and read the value from the parsed link, as follows:

var link = 'http://www.example.com/blog';
var a = document.createElement('a'); // Create a dummy <a> element
a.href = link;                       // Assign link, let the browser parse it
var url_pathname = a.pathname;
alert(url_pathname);

---

Explanation of your failed method:

• link is a string.
• When you use link[0], you get the first character of the string, h.
• Then, you're trying to get the pathname property of it. This property is not defined on the string, hence you receive undefined.
  (added this explanation to clarify why JavaScript didn't throw an error)

Answer 2

Try this, made it less verbose:

//var link = 'http://www.example.com/blog'; // try this
var link = "http://www.example.com/blog/post";
var i = link.indexOf('.com')​​​;//assuming ends in .com, find where it starts
alert(link.substring(i+4));//use +4 to skip .com

See the demo: http://jsfiddle.net/c6MMz/

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