Check if URL Contains a String

In the browser, window.location.href contains the current URL. For example, if you open Chrome developer console on this page and type window.location.href, you'll see the following:

https://masteringjs.io/fundamentals/if-url-contains

From there, you can use our recommended process for checking if a string contains a substring in JavaScript:

window.location.href.includes('masteringjs.io'); // true
window.location.href.includes('foobar'); // false

Note that Internet Explorer does not support the includes() method on strings. For IE support, you should use indexOf() instead. If indexOf() returns -1, that means the substring is not present in the current URL.

window.location.href.indexOf('masteringjs.io') !== -1; // true
window.location.href.indexOf('foobar') !== -1; // false

Other URL Components

Sometimes you don't want to test whether the whole URL contains a given string, just part of the URL. Browsers also expose some other common URL components as properties on window.location:

• window.location.host: the hostname, like masteringjs.io
• window.location.pathname: everything after /, like /tutorials/fundamentals/if-url-contains
• window.location.search: everything after ?, like ?foo=bar, or empty string
• window.location.hash: everything after #, like #other-url-components, or empty string

Using Regular Expressions

You can also test whether the current URL matches a regular expression using the string match() function as follows.

window.location.href.match(/masteringjs/) != null; // true
window.location.href.match(/foobar/) != null; // false

More Fundamentals Tutorials

• Check if a Date is Valid in JavaScript
• Encode base64 in JavaScript
• JavaScript Add Month to Date
• JavaScript Add Days to Date
• 3 Patterns to Merge Arrays in JavaScript
• Convert a BigInt to a Number in JavaScript
• The parseInt Function in JavaScript