Question

In reponse to this question I wrote this function (well, I made it a bit more elaborate then in that answer):

function redirectto(url) {
    window.location.href = url; // first try it the easy way

    // we're going to do it the hard way - create a temporary form and submit it
    var tmpform = document.createElement("form");
    tmpform.method = "GET";

    // add data, use hidden fields for querystrings
    if (url.indexOf("?") == -1) {
        tmpform.action = url;
    } else {
        var urlparts = url.split("?", 2);
        tmpform.action = urlparts[0];

        var queryparts = urlparts[1].replace(/\+/g, " ").split(/[&;]/g);
        for (var i = 0; i < queryparts.length; i++) {
            var pair = queryparts[i].split("=");
            var key = pair[0];
            var value = pair.length > 1 ? pair[1] : "";

            var field;
            try { // sigh IE, can't you do ANYTHING right?
                field = document.createElement("<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"" + key + "\" value=\"" + value + "\">");
            } catch(err) {
                field = document.createElement("input");
                field.type = "hidden";
                field.name = key;
                field.value = value;
            }
            tmpform.appendChild(field);
        }
    }

    // add to page and submit
    document.body.appendChild(tmpform);
    tmpform.submit();
}

The answer I wrote got 3 downvotes, so my question is: is this the correct way to do this or is simply window.location.href = url enough?

Answer 1

window.location.href = url is a valid way of redirecting the browser. Typically I discourage browser redirection unless absolutely necessary. There tend to be few good reasons to redirect via JS.