Question

I have a page that sets a few variables using javascript Math.random() as shown.

var RandomValue1 = Math.floor(Math.random() * 5);
var RandomValue2 = Math.floor(Math.random() * 6);
var string = array1[RandomValue1];
var string = array2[RandomValue2];

I would like to allow a user to pass the RandomValue value through the URL to another person. When the second person goes to the shared URL, RandomValue is the value as the first person – so that the second person sees the same ‘string’ as the first person.

I am fairly new to web design and web programming so I don’t know if this needs to be handled on the server-side or client-side.

I assume I need to pass a url something like page1.html?RandomValue1=1&RandomValue2=3 but I cannot get the page to then set those variables and load. Can this be done in JavaScript?

Answer 1

You can read GET variables with javascript. Here is an example function (source):

function getUrlVars() {
  var vars = {};
  var parts = window.location.href.replace(/[?&]+([^=&]+)=([^&]*)/gi, function(m,key,value) {
    vars[key] = value;
  });
  return vars;
}

Usage:

var first = getUrlVars()["id"];
var second = getUrlVars()["page"];

alert(first);
alert(second);