Get filename from URL using Javascript

Javascript

June 19, 2009

This snippet will get the filename from the url. The filename is the last part of the URL from the last trailing slash. For example, if the URL is http://www.example.com/dir/file.html then
file.html is the file name.

Explanation

var url = window.location.pathname;

This declares the url variable and adds the current pathname as its value.

var filename = url.substring(url.lastIndexOf('/')+1);
alert(filename);

substring (method) - extract characters from start (parameter).
url is the stringObject url.substring(start)

lastIndexOf (method) - position of last occurrence of specified string value, in this case the '/'

Add one to lastIndexOf because we do not want to return the '/'

Full snippet

var url = window.location.pathname;
var filename = url.substring(url.lastIndexOf('/')+1);
alert(filename);

Comments

Submitted by Deo Favente (not verified) on Sun, 26/07/2009 - 02:37.

Actually, that does not define the file name.
I'm bad at explaining... so here's the javascript I use:

function getFileName() {
//this gets the full url
var url = document.location.href;
//this removes the anchor at the end, if there is one
url = url.substring(0, (url.indexOf("#") == -1) ? url.length : url.indexOf("#"));
//this removes the query after the file name, if there is one
url = url.substring(0, (url.indexOf("?") == -1) ? url.length : url.indexOf("?"));
//this removes everything before the last slash in the path
url = url.substring(url.lastIndexOf("/") + 1, url.length);
//return
return url;
}

Submitted by John L (not verified) on Fri, 15/07/2011 - 16:12.

DEO, Just what I was looking for thank you.

Submitted by Alex W (not verified) on Mon, 07/11/2011 - 05:11.

Nice function! It deals with all situation! Thanks!

Submitted by Bryant (not verified) on Fri, 06/11/2009 - 02:56.

Thanks, this was just what I needed

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 10/09/2010 - 13:37.

Thanks!! :)

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 03/02/2011 - 10:11.

thanx man

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 15/02/2012 - 13:37.

Thank you it helped me to solve a issue

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 28/03/2012 - 13:50.

thanks

Submitted by Sundar (not verified) on Fri, 27/04/2012 - 18:44.

Thanks.... nice info

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 08/05/2012 - 20:14.

thanks

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 21/05/2012 - 23:02.

Note that this returns an empty string if the filename part of the URL is empty, eg "http://www.google.co.uk/".