When both a query string and anchor tag (hash tag) are visible in a URL, what is the proper order for them to appear?
http://www.whatever.com?var=val#anchor
or
http://www.whatever.com#anchor?var=val
Is there any documentation on this?
update: The URLs are being handled by Wordpress / PHP
?var=var#hash
everything after #
is client side.
Also, look into url rewriting to get rid of ugly ?var=var
? should come before the # as noted in RFC 3986:
relative-ref = relative-part [ "?" query ] [ "#" fragment ]
Taken from an answer over at superuser (https://superuser.com/questions/498617/does-an-anchor-tag-come-before-the-query-string-or-after):
If intention of using #
is to denote page fragment
then - yes ?
then #
.
If #
is coming before ?
and it is not to denote page fragment
(this can happen when #
is part of authority (username and password)) it has to be encoded or you are in trouble. Same applies to any other special characters (:
,@
,...) that could give different meaning to url.
Note that when the URL has both anchor tags (#) and query strings (?), the browser may ignore the query string and navigate to the anchor tag without reloading the page.
It may be necessary to submit the page using a
<form action='webpage.php?q=string#tag' method='GET or POST'>
<input type='text' id='q' name='q' value='string'>
<input type='submit' value='submit'>
</form>
rather than just a URL link
<a href='webpage.php?q=string#tag'>.