Forward redirect to previous page - javascript

I have a webpage which is linked to from a number of different webpages, a user clicks a link on one of the parent pages, arrives at the webpage and completes a task. When the task is complete the user needs to be redirected to the previous page.
I'm aware I could use the window.history.back() / window.history.go(-1) functions - however what i'd really like is something which the browser considers a 'forward' action so as not to confuse the users if they click the forward/back button after a redirect.
I've tried using document.referrer but this gets blanked in the event of a page reload on the webpage.
The solution would need to be compatible back to IE8 (unfortunately!). Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Fetching referrer URLs can be unreliable no matter which language you use https://stackoverflow.com/determining-referer-in-php
The best option is to pass the parent url to the task along with the data that you are already sending, despite the initial time outlay (updating the parent pages to do this) it would be the most reliable.
You could try and do a similar thing with a session or cookie to store the url upon starting the task, but it depends on how you have written the current task as to wether you would still need to modify the parent pages.

What about providing a parameter (it may be even the whole url to go after the action) that will let the page know where to go? (like login pages usually do).
It will probably imply modifying all your pages, so it may not be a solution in your case.

Related

GTM - Do not fire an HTML tag if the customer refreshes the page

We have currently an order confirmation page on our website after the customer paid where information is sent to our analytics tools.
If the customer refreshes the page, the information about his order is sent again to our analytics tool and then we get wrong/duplicate information in our orders statistics.
Is there an easy way to prevent this?
The goal would be here to not trigger the custom html tag when the customer reloads the page.
It should be only fired once.
Thanks!
Best,
Victor
You can use PerformanceNavigation.type or PerformanceNavigationTiming.type respectively in a Javascript variable to find out if the page has been reloaded (the former is already marked as deprecated while the latter is still marked as experimental, so to be on the safe side you should probably check which one is supported by the browser and use that).
Then use the return value to detect reloads and block the tag depending on that.
An alternative would be to set a cookie or local storage entry with the transaction and block based on that.
We finally found another solution that seems to work: We used an additional trigger in GTM that prevent the info to be sent twice.
When calling the page for the first time, the condition is set to "false", and on each following request to that page it is set to "true".
We made some test orders and it seems to works correctly. Thanks!

Differentiate client-side redirection vs 302 redirection on React app

I have a React/React-Router application that is required to know the context on how users landed on the page. There could be two different cases (1) 302 redirection (2) client-side redirection.
Let me add use cases to give more details around it
(1): users directly hits the URL and landed on a page
(2): Users clicked a button and are redirected to another page via Link API.
I noticed that the react router props contains history object and on (1) case, the history action is POP while on client-side redirection cases (2) it was either PUSH or REPLACE. Would it be a good assumption that I can honor the history action and determine 302 redirection by checking the action === POP?
to suit your particular your use case there are multiple approaches on how we can achieve this let's go over a few you referred to in question
User clicks on a button: so if we have full control over the functionality of a button we can define multiple parameters if a user clicks on it e.g. we can add a query parameter on the forwarding url and on the next page we know where the user came from kinda like this www.example.com/?referrer=oldButton this would indicate clear patterns on how a user came to the page. or in terms of react router, we can pass additional params to access later on another component.
history.push('/path', yourData);
users directly hits the URL and landed on a page: you assumed correct we can use POP, PUSH, REPLACE methods to identify how the user came to land on a specific page. a browser use what we call history, it keeps a record of every page visited before or after another, we can either use it directly or through react-router
Hope that helped :)

How to change browser url without changing anything in history

You might think this is a duplicate, but it's not. I've seen the other SO answers about changing the browser url with replaceState() but I have a problem...
On one webpage on my website, it receives a lot of parameters, so the link goes on and on and on... I did replaceState(), and it shortened the URL by a lot. That worked. If I go on another link, and I go back in history, the URL will still be the same that I defined on replaceState() and the page gives a 404 error. Is there a way to just load the link the way it is and then temporarily change the URL so the user doesn't see a huge link but the system uses the actual URL?
I'm using JSP, go ahead and give me answers in JavaScript, JQuery, or Java.
You could store the parameters in localstorage (ie a cookie) then have your next page un-pick them from localstorage, thus reducing the size needed of the URL in the frst place. Example code (stolen from Storing Objects in HTML5 localStorage) :
// add to storage
localStorage.setItem('myAttibute', 'acceptable');
// Retrieve the object from storage (on another page)
var sMyAttibute= localStorage.getItem('myAttibute');
alert("myAttibute=" + sMyAttibute);
Hopefully it'll tell you that my attribute is acceptable.

Javascript Refresh One Time Without Utilizing Hashtags

I'm using an orgy of javascript functions and scripts and they're conflicting a bit.
I have a page which already utilizes a hashtag in order to function correctly but one of the functions doesn't work unless the page is refreshed.
I've done a bit searching and have found a few ways to refresh the page but it checks to see there is a hashtag already in the url... and in my case I already do so it doesn't help.
I want to be able to refresh the page ONE time and that's all... without checking to see if there are hashtags in the url.
Help would be appreciated. Thanks
This might be what you are looking for:
function doRefreshOnce(){
if(localStorage["refreshed"]=="false"){
localStorage["refreshed"]="true"
location.reload();
}
}
What do you mean by once?
Once ever? Once per user? Once per visit? What if a user has two tabs with the same page open? should it refresh in one of those tabs or both?
if you need once ever that needs to be handled server side.
once per user could be handled using local storage or a cookie
once per "visit" (i.e. once per set of tabs) could be handled by a cookie
once per tab/visit needs to be handled by the URL, be that using fragment identifiers or a querystring.

Google Analytics - multiple domain tracking

Could anyone clarify how the GA actions _gaq.push(['_link', <href>]); and _gaq.push(['_linkByPost', <form>]); work?
I'm not interested on how to use them as presented in the documentation. I understand those scenarios. I want to know more about what they do when called.
Edit:
I suspect how this works but I need some confirmation from someone that fiddled with this longer than me. I want to know what the process is in each of the cases in small steps. I know that it changes the sent data in order to overwrite to cookie on the target site, but I need to know exactly the actions that happen (in terms of JavaScript on the sending page) after you do the push.
I would also like to know if I could use _gaq.push(['_link', <href>]); from anywhere in my code to change the page.
Thank you,
Alin
We will assume _gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]); used on any needed page.
What _gaq.push(['_link', <href>]); does:
Appends the __utm<x> cookies to <href>. You need to return false in the onclick of the anchor so that the original link does not follow through.
Changes the browser location to the newly formed URL.
What _gaq.push(['_linkByPost', <form>]); does:
Changes the action attribute of <form> so that it includes the __utm<x> cookies.
What happens on the target page:
The GA script on the target page checks the received parameters and if the __utm<x>s are sent it overwrites its own cookies with these. This results in identifying the user as being the same on that left your original page.
As a bonus _gaq.push(['_link', <href>]); can be used in (almost) any situation window.open(<href>); can be used.
They pass the cookie information from one domain to another; in the instance, it does this by appending a query string on the next page; with _linkByPost, it sends the cookie information as GET parameters on the form action along with your POST data.
If _setAllowLinker is set to true on the target page, the cookie information sent will overwrite the default Google Analytics cookies on the target page, and will allow for linked, consistent session information between the two, as the cookies will ensure that consistent data is shared.
EDIT:
No, you can't call it from anywhere in your page, unless you bind it to an onclick of where you'd like it called.

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