Get request part after hash sign

Question

My web-site has AJAX-powered search, that uses deep-linking. When user follows a link …

http://example.com/articles#/?tags=Mac%20OS,review

… tags "Mac OS" and "review" should already been selected in a search form and articles, related to "Mac OS" and "review" should be presented on the page.

I have following scenario, that a need to fix

1. User follows the link http://example.com/articles#/?tags=Mac%20OS
2. During initial page rendering, all articles are fetched
3. On the client side, hash-part is parsed and only "Mac OS"-related articles are requested via AJAX.
4. Client receives "Mac OS"-articles and replaces all articles, fetched at step 2. Also it marks "Mac OS" tag as selected on a search-form.

The problem here - is duplicated articles rendering, that looks really bad for the user. He looks at all articles, and after couple of seconds, they will be replaced with "Mac OS"-articles.

I need to have following scenario:

1. User follows the link http://example.com/articles#/?tags=Mac%20OS
2. Server parses hash-part and returns "Mac OS"-related articles
3. Client understands, that "Mac OS"-articles are already there and does nothing. It just marks "Mac OS" tag as selected.

To do this, i need to get hash-part of the request string:

/?tags=Mac%20OS

I cannot use request parameters after ?, because i use AJAX and deep-linking. With ?-part, browser will be forced to reload the page. I need to do anything without reloading the page.

You help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer 1

The part of a URL after the hash is not sent to the server, so you can't process it there. You can extract that part of the URL in the client-side code that creates your Ajax request and send it as a parameter.

Answer 2

@NickFitz is correct, but if you must send whatever comes after the # hash/pound symbol, you can use the URL encoded characters that represent # which is %23.

So %23 and whatever that comes after %23 will be sent to the server. If you are using modern web server, they will automatically recognize that %23 is #. In Ruby on Rails, Rack does this for you.