url parsing - Creating a new Location object in javascript

Question

Is it possible to create a new Location object in javascript? I have a url as a string and I would like to leverage what javascript already provides to gain access to the different parts of it.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about (I know this doesn't work):

var url = new window.location("http://www.example.com/some/path?name=value#anchor");
var protocol = url.protocol;
var hash = url.hash;
// etc etc

Is anything like this possible or would I essentially have to create this object myself?

Answer 1

Well, you could use an anchor element to extract the url parts, for example:

var url = document.createElement('a');
url.href = "http://www.example.com/some/path?name=value#anchor";
var protocol = url.protocol;
var hash = url.hash;

alert('protocol: ' + protocol);
alert('hash: ' + hash);
?

It works on all modern browsers and even on IE 5.5+.

Check an example here.