Convert relative path to absolute using JavaScript

Question

There's a function, which gives me urls like:

./some.css
./extra/some.css
../../lib/slider/slider.css

It's always a relative path.

Let's think we know current path of the page, like http://site.com/stats/2012/, not sure how do I convert these relative paths to real ones?

We should get something like:

./some.css => http://site.com/stats/2012/some.css
./extra/some.css => http://site.com/stats/2012/extra/some.css
../../lib/slider/slider.css => http://site.com/lib/slider/slider.css

No jQuery, only vanilla javascript.

Answer 1

This should do it:

function absolute(base, relative) {
    var stack = base.split("/"),
        parts = relative.split("/");
    stack.pop(); // remove current file name (or empty string)
                 // (omit if "base" is the current folder without trailing slash)
    for (var i=0; i<parts.length; i++) {
        if (parts[i] == ".")
            continue;
        if (parts[i] == "..")
            stack.pop();
        else
            stack.push(parts[i]);
    }
    return stack.join("/");
}

Answer 2

This from MDN is unbreakable!

/*\
|*|
|*|  :: translate relative paths to absolute paths ::
|*|
|*|  https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/document.cookie
|*|
|*|  The following code is released under the GNU Public License, version 3 or later.
|*|  http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0-standalone.html
|*|
\*/

function relPathToAbs (sRelPath) {
  var nUpLn, sDir = "", sPath = location.pathname.replace(/[^\/]*$/, sRelPath.replace(/(\/|^)(?:\.?\/+)+/g, "$1"));
  for (var nEnd, nStart = 0; nEnd = sPath.indexOf("/../", nStart), nEnd > -1; nStart = nEnd + nUpLn) {
    nUpLn = /^\/(?:\.\.\/)*/.exec(sPath.slice(nEnd))[0].length;
    sDir = (sDir + sPath.substring(nStart, nEnd)).replace(new RegExp("(?:\\\/+[^\\\/]*){0," + ((nUpLn - 1) / 3) + "}$"), "/");
  }
  return sDir + sPath.substr(nStart);
}

Sample usage:

/* Let us be in /en-US/docs/Web/API/document.cookie */

alert(location.pathname);
// displays: /en-US/docs/Web/API/document.cookie

alert(relPathToAbs("./"));
// displays: /en-US/docs/Web/API/

alert(relPathToAbs("../Guide/API/DOM/Storage"));
// displays: /en-US/docs/Web/Guide/API/DOM/Storage

alert(relPathToAbs("../../Firefox"));
// displays: /en-US/docs/Firefox

alert(relPathToAbs("../Guide/././API/../../../Firefox"));
// displays: /en-US/docs/Firefox

Answer 3

The proposed and accepted solution does not support server relative URLs and does not work on absolute URLs. If my relative is /sites/folder1 it won't work for example.

Here is another function that supports full, server relative or relative URLs as well as ../ for one level up. It is not perfect but covers a lot of options. Use this when your base URL is not the current page URL, otherwise there are better alternatives.

    function relativeToAbsolute(base, relative) {
    //make sure base ends with /
    if (base[base.length - 1] != '/')
        base += '/';

    //base: https://server/relative/subfolder/
    //url: https://server
    let url = base.substr(0, base.indexOf('/', base.indexOf('//') + 2));
    //baseServerRelative: /relative/subfolder/
    let baseServerRelative = base.substr(base.indexOf('/', base.indexOf('//') + 2));
    if (relative.indexOf('/') === 0)//relative is server relative
        url += relative;
    else if (relative.indexOf("://") > 0)//relative is a full url, ignore base.
        url = relative;
    else {
        while (relative.indexOf('../') === 0) {
            //remove ../ from relative
            relative = relative.substring(3);
            //remove one part from baseServerRelative. /relative/subfolder/ -> /relative/
            if (baseServerRelative !== '/') {
                let lastPartIndex = baseServerRelative.lastIndexOf('/', baseServerRelative.length - 2);
                baseServerRelative = baseServerRelative.substring(0, lastPartIndex + 1);
            }
        }
        url += baseServerRelative + relative;//relative is a relative to base.
    }

    return url;
}

Hope this helps. It was really frustrating not to have this basic utility available in JavaScript.

Answer 4

Javascript will do it for you. There's no need to create a function.

var link = document.createElement("a");
link.href = "../../lib/slider/slider.css";
alert(link.protocol+"//"+link.host+link.pathname+link.search+link.hash);

// Output will be "http://www.yoursite.com/lib/slider/slider.css"

But if you need it as a function:

var absolutePath = function(href) {
    var link = document.createElement("a");
    link.href = href;
    return (link.protocol+"//"+link.host+link.pathname+link.search+link.hash);
}

Update: Simpler version if you need the full absolute path:

var absolutePath = function(href) {
    var link = document.createElement("a");
    link.href = href;
    return link.href;
}

Answer 5

I found a very simple solution to do this while still supporting IE 10 (IE doesn't support the URL-API) by using the History API (IE 10 or higher). This solution works without any string manipulation.

function resolveUrl(relativePath) {
    var originalUrl = document.location.href;
    history.replaceState(history.state, '', relativePath);
    var resolvedUrl = document.location.href;
    history.replaceState(history.state, '', originalUrl);
    return resolvedUrl;
}

history.replaceState() won't trigger browser navigation, but will still modify document.location and supports relative aswell as absolute paths.

The one drawback of this solution is that if you are already using the History-API and have set a custom state with a title, the current state's title is lost.

Answer 6

I had to add a fix to the accepted solution because we can have slashes after # in our angularjs navigation.

function getAbsoluteUrl(base, relative) {
  // remove everything after #
  var hashPosition = base.indexOf('#');
  if (hashPosition > 0){
    base = base.slice(0, hashPosition);
  }

  // the rest of the function is taken from http://stackoverflow.com/a/14780463
  // http://stackoverflow.com/a/25833886 - this doesn't work in cordova
  // http://stackoverflow.com/a/14781678 - this doesn't work in cordova
  var stack = base.split("/"),
      parts = relative.split("/");
  stack.pop(); // remove current file name (or empty string)
               // (omit if "base" is the current folder without trailing slash)
  for (var i=0; i<parts.length; i++) {
    if (parts[i] == ".")
      continue;
    if (parts[i] == "..")
      stack.pop();
    else
      stack.push(parts[i]);
  }
  return stack.join("/");
}