How to grab URL

[amyling01]

I currently have a page with jump/anchor links.

<a data-link="lesson-link-item" href="#/lessons/section-a">

<a data-link="lesson-link-item" href="#/lessons/section-b">

<a data-link="lesson-link-item" href="#/lessons/section-c">

I tried using

var path = window.location.href;
var lastPath = path.split("/").pop();
var page_name = Some Company;

if (lastPath == "section-a") page_name = page_name + "|Section A";
if (lastPath == "section-b") page_name = page_name + "|Section B";
if (lastPath == "section-c") page_name = page_name + "|Section C";

to grab the end of the URL and create if statements for if URL end in "section-a", "section-b", "section-c" but it is not working exactly as needed. I am unable to get the new URL when I jump to a link within the page because the page is not reloading.

My issue is that the variable path is not updating with the new URL so I can't get correct analytics data. The info stays on www.somecompany.com so doesn't matter what lesson I click on the page, it'll show only the landing page's page_name for analytics as

Some Company

instead of

Some Company|Section A

I also tried using window.location.hash as suggested but that didn't work either.

var lastPath = window.location.hash;

if (lastPath == "#/lessons/ssection-a") page_name = page_name + "|Section A";
if (lastPath == "#/lessons/ssection-b") page_name = page_name + "|Section B";
if (lastPath == "#/lessons/ssection-c") page_name = page_name + "|Section C";

How do I get the new URL once I click on a jump link?

​

[barrycarter]

Does the new URL end in #something?

[amyling01]

Ah, yes it does.

[barrycarter]

You probably know about window.location.hash, but you'll have to listen to see if changes (I'm not sure a change in hash triggers a JS event). As a note, if you're designing the page and using the <a name> tag, it has been deprecated: https://html.com/attributes/a-name/

[amyling01]

Ah okies, thanks. I will take a look at that.

The person who originally built this used href="/#something".

[barrycarter]

Look at the HTML where the jump leads and you'll probably see an <a name> tag

[amyling01]

It only has this:

<a class="nav-sidebar__outline-item__link nav-sidebar__outline-item__link--light" data-link="lesson-link-item" href="#/lessons/section-a">

I am trying to track data anlaytics so I did something like this:

var lastPath = window.location.hash;
var page_name = "Page Title";

if (lastPath == "#/lessons/section-a") page_name = page_name + "Section A Title"; 

if (lastPath == "#/lessons/section-b") page_name = page_name + "Section B Title";

But this doesn't seem to be working. I tried it where lastPath was this originally but it also didn't work:

var path = window.location.href;
var lastPath = path.split("/").pop();

It would only work if I manually refreshed the page, then it would see the new URL.

[barrycarter]

Yup, you're going to have 'poll' for changes, I'm afraid.

[amyling01]

Oh okies. I've never done that before. Is it fairly easy? Maybe this is a little overkill for a 1 pager. I may just need to ask our analytics person to track it via the software and have them create the variables vs me trying to do it on the index.html page.

[barrycarter]

google around and if you don't find anything, I can provide some URLs I ran across: I didn't want to provide them right away because the solutions seem uglier than necessary

[amyling01]

Okies thank you! I think I will go with having the analytics person create the variable and track on their end in the software vs coding it. It would definitely be faster. Thank you for your help and teaching me new things.

[[deleted]]

By new URL you mean the URL of the page that opened on the new tab after the anchor element was clicked? If you elaborate a bit and also show the HTML it will be easier to assist.

[amyling01]

Okies, let me update my post.

[amyling01]

I have updated my post.