Get the Current Domain Name with Javascript (Not the Path, Etc.)

Get the Current Domain Name with Javascript (Not the Path, Etc.)

I plan on buying two domain names for the same site. Depending on which domain is used I plan on providing slightly different data on the page. Is there a way for me to detect the actual domain name that the page is loading from so that I know what to change my content to?

I've looked around for stuff like this but most of it doesn't work the way I want it to.

For instance when using

document.write(document.location)

on JSFiddle it returns

i.e. the actual path or whatever that is.

2

19 Answers

How about:

window.location.hostname

The location object actually has a number of attributes referring to different parts of the URL

5

Let's suppose you have this url path:

So, you can serve yourself by the location values, as follow:

window.location.hash: "#2"
​
window.location.host: "localhost:4200"
​
window.location.hostname: "localhost"
​
window.location.href: ""
​
window.location.origin: ""
​
window.location.pathname: "/landing"
​
window.location.port: "4200"
​
window.location.protocol: "http:"

window.location.search: "?query=1"

Now we can conclude you're looking for:

window.location.hostname
5

If you are not interested in the host name (for example ) but in the domain name (for example example.com), this works for valid host names:

function getDomainName(hostName)
{
    return hostName.substring(hostName.lastIndexOf(".", hostName.lastIndexOf(".") - 1) + 1);
}
6
function getDomain(url, subdomain) {
    subdomain = subdomain || false;

    url = url.replace(/(https?:\/\/)?(www.)?/i, '');

    if (!subdomain) {
        url = url.split('.');

        url = url.slice(url.length - 2).join('.');
    }

    if (url.indexOf('/') !== -1) {
        return url.split('/')[0];
    }

    return url;
}

Examples

  • getDomain(''); // example.com
  • getDomain('); // example.com
  • getDomain('', true); // blog.example.com
  • getDomain(location.href); // ..

Previous version was getting full domain (including subdomain). Now it determines the right domain depending on preference. So that when a 2nd argument is provided as true it will include the subdomain, otherwise it returns only the 'main domain'

4

You can get it from location object in Javascript easily:

For example URL of this page is:


Then we can get the exact domain with following properties of location object:

location.host = ""
location.protocol= "http:"

you can make the full domain with:

location.protocol + "//" + location.host

Which in this example returns

I addition of this we can get full URL and also the path with other properties of location object:

location.href= ""    
location.pathname= "questions/11401897/get-the-current-domain-name-with-javascript-not-the-path-etc"

If you wish a full domain origin, you can use this:

document.location.origin

And if you wish to get only the domain, use can you just this:

document.location.hostname

But you have other options, take a look at the properties in:

document.location

If you are only interested in the domain name and want to ignore the subdomain then you need to parse it out of host and hostname.

The following code does this:

var firstDot = window.location.hostname.indexOf('.');
var tld = ".net";
var isSubdomain = firstDot < window.location.hostname.indexOf(tld);
var domain;

if (isSubdomain) {
    domain = window.location.hostname.substring(firstDot == -1 ? 0 : firstDot + 1);
}
else {
  domain = window.location.hostname;
}
2

Since this question asks for domain name, not host name, a correct answer should be

window.location.hostname.split('.').slice(-2).join('.')

This works for host names like too.

1

Use

document.write(document.location.hostname)​

window.location has a bunch of properties. See here for a list of them.

0

window.location.hostname is a good start. But it includes sub-domains, which you probably want to remove. E.g. if the hostname is , you probably want just the example.com bit.

There are, as ever, corner cases that make this fiddly, e.g. bbc.co.uk. The following regex works well for me:

let hostname = window.location.hostname;
// remove any subdomains, e.g.  -> example.com
let domain = hostname.match(/^(?:.*?\.)?([a-zA-Z0-9\-_]{3,}\.(?:\w{2,8}|\w{2,4}\.\w{2,4}))$/)[1];
console.log("domain: ", domain);
2

If you want to get domain name in JavaScript, just use the following code:

var domain_name = document.location.hostname;
alert(domain_name);

If you need to web page URL path so you can access web URL path use this example:

var url = document.URL;
alert(url);

What about this function?

window.location.hostname.match(/\w*\.\w*$/gi)[0]

This will match only the domain name regardless if its a subdomain or a main domain

2

I figure it ought to be as simple as this:

url.split("/")[2]

1

for my case the best match is window.location.origin

Combining a few answers from the above, the following works really well for me for destroying Cookies:

  /**
   * Utility method to obtain the domain URI:
   */
  fetchDomainURI() {
    if (window.location.port.length > 0) {
      return window.location.hostname;
    }
    return `.${window.location.hostname.match(/\w*\.\w*$/gi)[0]}`;
  }

Works for IP addresses with ports, e.g., 0.0.0.0:8000 etc, as well as complex domains like app.staging.example.com returning .example.com => allows for cross-domain Cookie setting and destroying.

1

I'm new to JavaScript, but cant you just use: document.domain ?

Example:

<p id="ourdomain"></p>

<script>
var domainstring = document.domain;
document.getElementById("ourdomain").innerHTML = (domainstring);
</script>

Output:

domain.com

or


Depending on what you use on your website.

Even if the question is about the domain name, the accepted solution includes the subdomain (eg. you get blog.example.com calling location.hostname). For future reference I suggest a one-liner to extract only the domain (eg. -> example.com) as Micheal.

location.hostname.split('.').filter(( _, i) => i < 2).join('.')

Beware! It can break when the TLD is composed of two parts (eg. .co.uk). If that's your case change 2 with 3 in the code above.

()

is needed to correctly parse out all domains without suffixes, working with dots as in the answers above will never completely be correct. Feel free to run the above codes samples against the public suffixes dat file to realize this.

You can roll your own code based on this or use a package like

getDomainWithoutSuffix('google.com');        // returns `google`
getDomainWithoutSuffix('fr.google.com');     // returns `google`
getDomainWithoutSuffix('fr.google.google');  // returns `google`
getDomainWithoutSuffix('foo.google.co.uk');  // returns `google`
getDomainWithoutSuffix('t.co');              // returns `t`
getDomainWithoutSuffix('fr.t.co');           // returns `t`
getDomainWithoutSuffix('); // returns `example`

Feel free to visit our “<a href="javascript:document.location.href=document.location.origin+'/contact-us'" title="Click to Contact Us" class="coded_link" >Contact” link

Indeed worked for me whereas I couldn't use PHP

Just tested that it worked thanks to the approach mentioned above in some of the answers, so quick and verified that worked

0

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Sarah Jenkins
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Sarah Jenkins

Sarah Jenkins is a veteran tech journalist with over 12 years of experience covering artificial intelligence, mobile innovations, and digital ethics. Her insights have appeared in leading technology publications worldwide.