A vocabulary and associated APIs for HTML and XHTML
This section describes features that apply most directly to Web browsers. Having said that, except where specified otherwise, the requirements defined in this section do apply to all user agents, whether they are Web browsers or not.
A browsing context is an environment in which Document
objects are
presented to the user.
A tab or window in a Web browser typically contains a browsing
context, as does an iframe
or frame
s in a
frameset
.
Each browsing context has a corresponding WindowProxy
object.
A browsing context has a session history, which lists the
Document
objects that that browsing context has presented, is
presenting, or will present. At any time, one Document
in each browsing
context is designated the active document. A Document
's
browsing context is that browsing context whose session
history contains the Document
, if any. (A Document
created using
an API such as createDocument()
has no
browsing context.)
Each Document
in a browsing context is associated with a Window
object. A
browsing context's WindowProxy
object forwards everything to the
browsing context's active document's Window
object.
In general, there is a 1-to-1 mapping from the Window
object to the
Document
object. There are two exceptions. First, a Window
can be reused
for the presentation of a second Document
in the same browsing context,
such that the mapping is then 1-to-2. This occurs when a browsing context is navigated from the initial about:blank
Document
to another, with replacement enabled. Second, a Document
can end up
being reused for several Window
objects when the document.open()
method is used, such that the mapping is then
many-to-1.
A Document
does not necessarily have a browsing context
associated with it. In particular, data mining tools are likely to never instantiate browsing
contexts.
A browsing context can have a creator browsing context, the browsing context that was responsible for its creation. If a browsing context has a parent browsing context, then that is its creator browsing context. Otherwise, if the browsing context has an opener browsing context, then that is its creator browsing context. Otherwise, the browsing context has no creator browsing context.
If a browsing context A has a creator browsing
context, then the Document
that was the active document of that
creator browsing context at the time A was created is the
creator Document
.
When a browsing context is first created, it must be created with a single
Document
in its session history, whose address is about:blank
, which is marked as being an HTML document, whose character
encoding is UTF-8, and which is both ready for post-load tasks and
completely loaded immediately, along with a new Window
object that
the Document
is associated with. The Document
must have a single child
html
node, which itself has two empty child nodes: a head
element, and a body
element. As soon as this
Document
is created, the user agent must implement the sandboxing for
it. If the browsing context has a creator Document
, then
the browsing context's Document
's referrer must be set to the address
of that creator Document
at the time of the browsing
context's creation.
If the browsing context is created specifically to be immediately navigated, then that initial navigation will have replacement enabled.
The origin and effective script origin of the
about:blank
Document
are set when the Document
is created.
If the new browsing context has a creator browsing context, then the
origin of the about:blank
Document
is an alias to the origin of the creator
Document
and the effective script origin of the
about:blank
Document
is initially an alias to the effective script origin of the
creator Document
. Otherwise, the origin of the
about:blank
Document
is a globally unique identifier assigned when the
new browsing context is created and the effective script origin of the
about:blank
Document
is initially an alias to its origin.
Certain elements (for example, iframe
elements) can instantiate further browsing contexts. These are called nested browsing contexts. If a browsing context P has a
Document
D with an element E that nests
another browsing context C inside it, then C is said to be
nested through D, and E is said to be the browsing context container of C.
If the browsing context container element E is in the Document
D, then P is
said to be the parent browsing context of C and C is said to be a child browsing context of P.
Otherwise, the nested browsing context C has no parent
browsing context.
A browsing context A is said to be an ancestor of a browsing context B if there exists a browsing context A' that is a child browsing context of A and that is itself an ancestor of B, or if the browsing context A is the parent browsing context of B.
A browsing context that is not a nested browsing context has no parent browsing context, and is the top-level browsing context of all the browsing contexts for which it is an ancestor browsing context.
The transitive closure of parent browsing contexts for a nested browsing context gives the list of ancestor browsing contexts.
The list of the descendant browsing contexts of a Document
d is the (ordered) list returned by the following algorithm:
Let list be an empty list.
For each child browsing context of d that is nested through an element that is in the Document
d, in the tree
order of the elements nesting those browsing
contexts, run these substeps:
Append that child browsing context to the list list.
Append the list of the descendant browsing contexts of the active document of that child browsing context to the list list.
Return the constructed list.
A Document
is said to be fully active when it is the active
document of its browsing context, and either its browsing context is a
top-level browsing context, or it has a parent browsing context and the
Document
through which it is
nested is itself fully active.
Because they are nested through an element, child browsing
contexts are always tied to a specific Document
in their parent browsing
context. User agents must not allow the user to interact with child browsing contexts of elements that are in Document
s that are
not themselves fully active.
A nested browsing context can be put into a delaying load
events mode. This is used when it is navigated, to delay the load event of the browsing
context container iframe
element before the new Document
is
created.
The document family of a browsing context consists of the union of all
the Document
objects in that browsing context's session
history and the document families of all those
Document
objects. The document family of a Document
object
consists of the union of all the document families of the
browsing contexts that are nested through the Document
object.
top
Returns the WindowProxy
for the top-level browsing context.
parent
Returns the WindowProxy
for the parent browsing context.
frameElement
Returns the Element
for the browsing context container.
Returns null if there isn't one.
Throws a SecurityError
exception in cross-origin situations.
The top
IDL attribute on the Window
object
of a Document
in a browsing context b must return
the WindowProxy
object of its top-level browsing context (which would be
its own WindowProxy
object if it was a top-level browsing context
itself), if it has one, or its own WindowProxy
object otherwise (e.g. if it was a
detached nested browsing context).
The parent
IDL attribute on the Window
object of a Document
in a browsing context b must
return the WindowProxy
object of the parent browsing context, if there
is one (i.e. if b is a child browsing context), or the
WindowProxy
object of the browsing context b itself,
otherwise (i.e. if it is a top-level browsing context or a detached nested
browsing context).
The frameElement
IDL attribute on the
Window
object of a Document
d, on getting, must run
the following algorithm:
If d is not a Document
in a nested browsing
context, return null and abort these steps.
If the browsing context container's Document
does not have the
same effective script origin as the effective script origin specified by the entry
settings object, then throw a SecurityError
exception and abort these steps.
Return the browsing context container for b.
It is possible to create new browsing contexts that are related to a top-level browsing context without being nested through an element. Such browsing contexts are called auxiliary browsing contexts. Auxiliary browsing contexts are always top-level browsing contexts.
An auxiliary browsing context has an opener browsing context, which is the browsing context from which the auxiliary browsing context was created.
The opener
IDL attribute on the Window
object, on getting, must return the WindowProxy
object of the browsing
context from which the current browsing context was created (its opener
browsing context), if there is one, if it is still available, and if the current
browsing context has not disowned its opener; otherwise, it must return null.
On setting, if the new value is null then the current browsing context must disown its opener; if the new value is anything else then the
user agent must
call the [[DefineOwnProperty]] internal method of the Window
object, passing the
property name "opener
" as the property key, and the Property Descriptor {
[[Value]]: value, [[Writable]]: true, [[Enumerable]]: true,
[[Configurable]]: true } as the property descriptor,
where value is the new value.
User agents may support secondary browsing contexts, which are browsing contexts that form part of the user agent's interface, apart from the main content area.
A browsing context A is familiar with a second browsing context B if one of the following conditions is true:
A browsing context A is allowed to navigate a second browsing context B if the following algorithm terminates positively:
If A is not the same browsing context as B, and A is not one of the ancestor browsing contexts of B, and B is not a top-level browsing context, and A's active document's active sandboxing flag set has its sandboxed navigation browsing context flag set, then abort these steps negatively.
Otherwise, if B is a top-level browsing context, and is
one of the ancestor browsing contexts of A, and A's Document
's active sandboxing
flag set has its sandboxed top-level navigation browsing context flag set,
then abort these steps negatively.
Otherwise, if B is a top-level browsing context, and is
neither A nor one of the ancestor browsing contexts of A, and A's Document
's active sandboxing
flag set has its sandboxed navigation browsing context flag set, and A is not the one permitted sandboxed navigator of B, then abort these steps negatively.
Otherwise, terminate positively!
An element has a browsing context scope origin if its Document
's
browsing context is a top-level browsing context or if all of its
Document
's ancestor browsing contexts
all have active documents whose origin are the
same origin as the element's Document
's origin. If an
element has a browsing context scope origin, then its value is the
origin of the element's Document
.
Each browsing context is defined as having a list of one or more directly reachable browsing contexts. These are:
The transitive closure of all the browsing contexts that are directly reachable browsing contexts forms a unit of related browsing contexts.
Each unit of related browsing contexts is then further divided into the smallest
number of groups such that every member of each group has an active document with an
effective script origin that, through appropriate manipulation of the document.domain
attribute, could be made to be the same as
other members of the group, but could not be made the same as members of any other group. Each
such group is a unit of related similar-origin browsing contexts.
There is also at most one event loop per unit of related similar-origin browsing contexts (though several units of related similar-origin browsing contexts can have a shared event loop).
Browsing contexts can have a browsing context name. By default, a browsing context has no name (its name is not set).
A valid browsing context name is any string with at least one character that does not start with a U+005F LOW LINE character. (Names starting with an underscore are reserved for special keywords.)
A valid browsing context name or keyword is any string that is either a valid
browsing context name or that is an ASCII case-insensitive match for one of:
_blank
, _self
, _parent
, or _top
.
These values have different meanings based on whether the page is sandboxed or not, as
summarized in the following (non-normative) table. In this table, "current" means the
browsing context that the link or script is in, "parent" means the parent
browsing context of the one the link or script is in, "master" means the nearest
ancestor browsing context of the one the link or script is in, "top" means the top-level
browsing context of the one the link or script is in, "new" means a new top-level
browsing context or auxiliary browsing context is to be created, subject to
various user preferences and user agent policies, "none" means that nothing will happen, and
"maybe new" means the same as "new" if the "allow-popups
" keyword is also specified on the
sandbox
attribute (or if the user overrode the
sandboxing), and the same as "none" otherwise.
Keyword | Ordinary effect | Effect in an iframe with...
| |
---|---|---|---|
sandbox=""
| sandbox="allow-top-navigation"
| ||
none specified, for links and form submissions | current | current | current |
empty string | current | current | current |
_blank
| new | maybe new | maybe new |
_self
| current | current | current |
_parent if there isn't a parent
| current | current | current |
_parent if parent is also top
| parent/top | none | parent/top |
_parent if there is one and it's not top
| parent | none | none |
_top if top is current
| current | current | current |
_top if top is not current
| top | none | top |
name that doesn't exist | new | maybe new | maybe new |
name that exists and is a descendant | specified descendant | specified descendant | specified descendant |
name that exists and is current | current | current | current |
name that exists and is an ancestor that is top | specified ancestor | none | specified ancestor/top |
name that exists and is an ancestor that is not top | specified ancestor | none | none |
other name that exists with common top | specified | none | none |
name that exists with different top, if familiar and one permitted sandboxed navigator | specified | specified | specified |
name that exists with different top, if familiar but not one permitted sandboxed navigator | specified | none | none |
name that exists with different top, not familiar | new | maybe new | maybe new |
Most of the restrictions on sandboxed browsing contexts are applied by other algorithms, e.g. the navigation algorithm, not the rules for choosing a browsing context given a browsing context name given below.
An algorithm is allowed to show a popup if any of the following conditions is true:
The task in which the algorithm is running is currently
processing an activation behavior whose click
event
was trusted.
The task in which the algorithm is running is currently running the event listener for a trusted event whose type is in the following list:
change
click
dblclick
mouseup
reset
submit
The task in which the algorithm is running was queued by an algorithm that was allowed to show a popup, and the chain of such algorithms started within a user-agent defined timeframe.
For example, if a user clicked a button, it might be acceptable for a popup to result from that after 4 seconds, but it would likely not be acceptable for a popup to result from that after 4 hours.
The rules for choosing a browsing context given a browsing context name are as follows. The rules assume that they are being applied in the context of a browsing context, as part of the execution of a task.
If the given browsing context name is the empty string or _self
, then
the chosen browsing context must be the current one.
If the given browsing context name is _self
, then this is an
explicit self-navigation override.
If the given browsing context name is _parent
, then the chosen
browsing context must be the parent browsing context of the current one,
unless there isn't one, in which case the chosen browsing context must be the current browsing
context.
If the given browsing context name is _top
, then the chosen browsing
context must be the top-level browsing context of the current one, if there is one,
or else the current browsing context.
If the given browsing context name is not _blank
and there exists a
browsing context whose name is the same as the given
browsing context name, and the current browsing context is familiar with that
browsing context, and the user agent determines that the two browsing contexts are related
enough that it is ok if they reach each other, then that browsing context must be the chosen
one. If there are multiple matching browsing contexts, the user agent should select one in some
arbitrary consistent manner, such as the most recently opened, most recently focused, or more
closely related.
If the browsing context is chosen by this step to be the current browsing context, then this is also an explicit self-navigation override.
Otherwise, a new browsing context is being requested, and what happens depends on the user agent's configuration and abilities — it is determined by the rules given for the first applicable option from the following list:
There is no chosen browsing context. The user agent may inform the user that a popup has been blocked.
Typically, there is no chosen browsing context.
The user agent may offer to create a new top-level browsing context or reuse an existing top-level browsing context. If the user picks one of those options, then the designated browsing context must be the chosen one (the browsing context's name isn't set to the given browsing context name). The default behaviour (if the user agent doesn't offer the option to the user, or if the user declines to allow a browsing context to be used) must be that there must not be a chosen browsing context.
If this case occurs, it means that an author has explicitly sandboxed the document that is trying to open a link.
noreferrer
keywordA new top-level browsing context must be created. If the given browsing
context name is not _blank
, then the new top-level browsing context's
name must be the given browsing context name (otherwise, it has no name). The chosen browsing
context must be this new browsing context. The creation of such a browsing context
is a new start for session storage.
If it is immediately navigated, then the navigation will be done with replacement enabled.
noreferrer
keyword doesn't
applyA new auxiliary browsing context must be created, with the opener
browsing context being the current one. If the given browsing context name is not _blank
, then the new auxiliary browsing context's name must be the given
browsing context name (otherwise, it has no name). The chosen browsing context must be this new
browsing context.
If it is immediately navigated, then the navigation will be done with replacement enabled.
The chosen browsing context is the current browsing context.
There must not be a chosen browsing context.
User agent implementors are encouraged to provide a way for users to configure the user agent to always reuse the current browsing context.
If the current browsing context's active document's active sandboxing flag set has the sandboxed navigation browsing context flag set and the chosen browsing context picked above, if any, is a new browsing context (whether top-level or auxiliary), then all the flags that are set in the current browsing context's active document's active sandboxing flag set when the new browsing context is created must be set in the new browsing context's popup sandboxing flag set, and the current browsing context must be set as the new browsing context's one permitted sandboxed navigator.
Window
object[Global] /*sealed*/ interface Window : EventTarget { // the current browsing context [Unforgeable] readonly attribute WindowProxy window; [Replaceable] readonly attribute WindowProxy self; [Unforgeable] readonly attribute Document document; attribute DOMString name; [PutForwards=href, Unforgeable] readonly attribute Location location; readonly attribute History history; [Replaceable] readonly attribute BarProp locationbar; [Replaceable] readonly attribute BarProp menubar; [Replaceable] readonly attribute BarProp personalbar; [Replaceable] readonly attribute BarProp scrollbars; [Replaceable] readonly attribute BarProp statusbar; [Replaceable] readonly attribute BarProp toolbar; attribute DOMString status; void close(); readonly attribute boolean closed; void stop(); void focus(); void blur(); // other browsing contexts [Replaceable] readonly attribute WindowProxy frames; [Replaceable] readonly attribute unsigned long length; [Unforgeable] readonly attribute WindowProxy top; attribute WindowProxy? opener; readonly attribute WindowProxy parent; readonly attribute Element? frameElement; WindowProxy open(optional DOMString url = "about:blank", optional DOMString target = "_blank", optional DOMString features = "", optional boolean replace = false); getter WindowProxy (unsigned long index); getter object (DOMString name); // the user agent readonly attribute Navigator navigator; readonly attribute External external; readonly attribute ApplicationCache applicationCache; // user prompts void alert(optional DOMString message = ""); boolean confirm(optional DOMString message = ""); DOMString? prompt(optional DOMString message = "", optional DOMString default = ""); void print(); }; Window implements GlobalEventHandlers; Window implements WindowEventHandlers;
window
frames
self
These attributes all return window.
document
Returns the Document
associated with window.
defaultView
Returns the Window
object of the active document.
The Window
interface must only be exposed to JavaScript if the
JavaScript global environment is a document environment.
The window
, frames
, and self
IDL attributes must all return the Window
object's browsing context's
WindowProxy
object.
The document
IDL attribute must return
the Window
object's newest Document
object.
The defaultView
IDL attribute of the
Document
interface must return the Document
's browsing
context's WindowProxy
object, if there is one, or null otherwise.
For historical reasons, Window
objects must also have a writable, configurable,
non-enumerable property named HTMLDocument
whose value is the
Document
interface object.
This section describes a security model that is underdefined, imperfect, and
does not match implementations. Work is ongoing to attempt to resolve this, but in the meantime,
please do not rely on this section for precision. Implementors are urged to send their feedback on
how cross-origin cross-global access to Window
and Location
objects
should work. See bug 20701.
User agents must throw a SecurityError
exception whenever any
properties of a Window
object are accessed when the incumbent settings object specifies
an effective script origin that is not the same as
the Window
object's
Document
's effective script origin, with the following
exceptions:
location
attribute
postMessage()
method
window
attribute
frames
attribute
self
attribute
top
attribute
parent
attribute
opener
attribute
closed
attribute
close()
method
blur()
method
focus()
method
When the incumbent settings object specifies an effective script origin that is different than
a Window
object's
Document
's effective script origin, the user agent must act as if
any changes to that Window
object's properties, getters, setters, etc, were not
present, and as if all the properties of that Window
object had their [[Enumerable]]
attribute set to false.
For members that return objects (including function objects), each distinct effective
script origin that is not the same as the Window
object's
Document
's effective script origin must be provided with a separate set
of objects. These objects must have the prototype chain appropriate for the script for which the
objects are created (not those that would be appropriate for scripts whose global
object, as specified by their settings object,
is the Window
object in question).
open
( [ url [, target [, features [, replace ] ] ] ] )Opens a window to show url (defaults to about:blank
), and
returns it. The target argument gives the name of the new window. If a
window exists with that name already, it is reused. The replace attribute,
if true, means that whatever page is currently open in that window will be removed from the
window's session history. The features argument is ignored.
name
[ = value ]Returns the name of the window.
Can be set, to change the name.
close
()Closes the window.
closed
Returns true if the window has been closed, false otherwise.
stop
()Cancels the document load.
The open()
method on Window
objects
provides a mechanism for navigating an existing browsing
context or opening and navigating an auxiliary browsing context.
The method has four arguments, though they are all optional.
The first argument, url, must be a valid non-empty URL for a
page to load in the browsing context. If the first argument is the empty string, then the url argument must be interpreted as "about:blank
". Otherwise, the
argument must be resolved to an absolute URL (or
an error), relative to the API base URL specified by the entry settings
object when the method was invoked.
The second argument, target, specifies the name of the browsing context that is to be navigated. It must be a valid browsing context name or keyword.
The third argument, features, has no defined effect and is mentioned for historical reasons only. User agents may interpret this argument as instructions to set the size and position of the browsing context, but are encouraged to instead ignore the argument entirely.
The fourth argument, replace, specifies whether or not the new page will replace the page currently loaded in the browsing context, when target identifies an existing browsing context (as opposed to leaving the current page in the browsing context's session history).
When the method is invoked, the user agent must first select a browsing context to navigate by applying the rules for choosing a browsing context given a browsing context name using the target argument as the name and the browsing context of the script as the context in which the algorithm is executed, unless the user has indicated a preference, in which case the browsing context to navigate may instead be the one indicated by the user.
For example, suppose there is a user agent that supports control-clicking a
link to open it in a new tab. If a user clicks in that user agent on an element whose onclick
handler uses the window.open()
API to open a page in an iframe, but, while doing so, holds
the control key down, the user agent could override the selection of the target browsing context
to instead target a new tab.
If applying the rules for choosing a browsing context given a browsing context
name using the target argument would result in there not being a chosen
browsing context, then throw an InvalidAccessError
exception and abort these
steps.
Otherwise, if url is not "about:blank
", the user agent must
navigate the selected browsing context to the
absolute URL obtained from resolving url earlier, with exceptions enabled. If the replace is true or if the browsing
context was just created as part of the rules for choosing a browsing context given a
browsing context name, then replacement must be
enabled also. The navigation must be done with the responsible
browsing context specified by the incumbent settings object as the source browsing
context. If the resolve a URL algorithm failed, then the user agent may either
instead navigate to an inline error page, with exceptions enabled and using the same replacement behavior and
source browsing context behavior as described earlier in this paragraph; or treat the url as "about:blank
", acting as described in the next paragraph.
If url is "about:blank
", and the browsing
context was just created as part of the rules for choosing a browsing context given a
browsing context name, then the user agent must instead queue a task to
fire a simple event named load
at the selected
browsing context's Window
object, but with its target
set to the selected browsing context's Window
object's Document
object
(and the currentTarget
set to the Window
object).
The method must return the WindowProxy
object of the browsing context
that was navigated, or null if no browsing context was navigated.
The name
attribute of the Window
object
must, on getting, return the current name of the
browsing context, and, on setting, set the name of the browsing context to the new value.
The name gets reset when the browsing context is navigated to another domain.
The close()
method on Window
objects should, if all the following conditions are met, close the browsing context A:
A browsing context is script-closable if it is an auxiliary
browsing context that was created by a script (as opposed to by an action of the user), or
if it is a browsing context whose session history contains only one
Document
.
The closed
attribute on Window
objects must return true if the Window
object's browsing context has
been discarded, and false otherwise.
The stop()
method on Window
objects should, if there is an existing attempt to navigate the browsing
context and that attempt is not currently running the unload a document
algorithm, cancel that navigation; then, it must abort the active document of the browsing context of
the Window
object on which it was invoked.
length
Returns the number of child browsing contexts.
Returns the indicated child browsing context.
The length
IDL attribute on the Window
interface must return the number of child browsing
contexts that are nested through
elements that are in the Document
that is the
active document of that Window
object, if that Window
's
browsing context shares the same event loop as the responsible
document specified by the entry settings object accessing the IDL attribute; otherwise,
it must return zero.
The supported property indices on the Window
object at any instant
are the numbers in the range 0 .. n-1, where n is the number returned by the length
IDL
attribute. If n is zero then there are no supported property
indices.
To determine the value of an indexed property index of a Window
object, the user agent must return the
WindowProxy
object of the indexth child browsing
context of the Document
that is nested through an element that is in the Document
, sorted in the tree order
of the elements nesting those browsing contexts.
These properties are the dynamic nested browsing context properties.
Window
objectReturns the indicated element or collection of elements.
The Window
interface supports named
properties. The supported property names at any moment consist of the
following, in tree order, ignoring later duplicates:
name
content attribute for all a
,
applet
, area
, embed
, form
,
frameset
, img
, and object
elements in the active
document that have a non-empty name
content attribute, andid
content attribute of any HTML element in the active document with a non-empty id
content attribute.To determine the value of a named property name when the Window
object is indexed for property
retrieval, the user agent must return the value obtained using the following steps:
Let objects be the list of named objects with the name name in the active document.
There will be at least one such object, by definition.
If objects contains a nested browsing context, then return
the WindowProxy
object of the nested browsing context corresponding to
the first browsing context container in tree order whose
browsing context is in objects, and abort these steps.
Otherwise, if objects has only one element, return that element and abort these steps.
Otherwise return an HTMLCollection
rooted at the Document
node,
whose filter matches only named objects with
the name name. (By definition, these will all be elements.)
Named objects with the name name, for the purposes of the above algorithm, are those that are either:
a
, applet
, area
, embed
,
form
, frameset
, img
, or object
elements that
have a name
content attribute whose value is name, orid
content attribute
whose value is name.A browsing context has a strong reference to each of its Document
s
and its WindowProxy
object, and the user agent itself has a strong reference to its
top-level browsing contexts.
A Document
has a strong reference to its Window
object.
A Window
object has a strong
reference to its Document
object through its document
attribute. Thus, references from other scripts to either of
those objects will keep both alive. Similarly, both Document
and Window
objects have implied strong references to the
WindowProxy
object.
Each script has a strong reference to its settings object, and each script settings object has strong references to its global object, responsible browsing context, and responsible document.
When a browsing context is to discard a Document
, the user
agent must run the following steps:
Set the Document
's salvageable state to false.
Run any unloading document cleanup steps for the Document
that
are defined by this specification and other applicable specifications.
Remove any tasks associated with the
Document
in any task source, without running those tasks.
Discard all the child browsing contexts of the Document
.
Lose the strong reference from the Document
's browsing context
to the Document
.
Whenever a Document
object is discarded, it is also removed from the list of the worker's
Document
s of each worker whose list contains that Document
.
When a browsing context is discarded, the strong reference
from the user agent itself to the browsing context must be severed, and all the
Document
objects for all the entries in the browsing context's session
history must be discarded as well.
User agents may discard top-level browsing contexts at any time (typically, in
response to user requests, e.g. when a user force-closes a window containing one or more top-level browsing contexts). Other browsing contexts must be discarded once their
WindowProxy
object is eligible for garbage collection.
When the user agent is required to close a browsing context, it must run the following steps:
Let specified browsing context be the browsing context being closed.
Prompt to unload the active document of the specified browsing context. If the user refused to allow the document to be unloaded, then abort these steps.
Unload the active document of the specified browsing context with the recycle parameter set to false.
Remove the specified browsing context from the user interface (e.g. close or hide its tab in a tabbed browser).
Discard the specified browsing context.
User agents should offer users the ability to arbitrarily close any top-level browsing context.
To allow Web pages to integrate with Web browsers, certain Web browser interface elements are exposed in a limited way to scripts in Web pages.
Each interface element is represented by a BarProp
object:
interface BarProp { attribute boolean visible; };
locationbar
. visible
Returns true if the location bar is visible; otherwise, returns false.
menubar
. visible
Returns true if the menu bar is visible; otherwise, returns false.
personalbar
. visible
Returns true if the personal bar is visible; otherwise, returns false.
scrollbars
. visible
Returns true if the scroll bars are visible; otherwise, returns false.
statusbar
. visible
Returns true if the status bar is visible; otherwise, returns false.
toolbar
. visible
Returns true if the toolbar is visible; otherwise, returns false.
The visible attribute, on getting, must return either true or a value determined by the user agent to most accurately represent the visibility state of the user interface element that the object represents, as described below. On setting, the new value must be discarded.
The following BarProp
objects exist for each Document
object in a
browsing context. Some of the user interface elements represented by these objects
might have no equivalent in some user agents; for those user agents, except when otherwise
specified, the object must act as if it was present and visible (i.e. its visible
attribute must return true).
BarProp
objectBarProp
objectBarProp
objectBarProp
objectBarProp
objectvisible
attribute may return false).BarProp
objectvisible
attribute may return false).The locationbar
attribute must return
the location bar BarProp
object.
The menubar
attribute must return the
menu bar BarProp
object.
The personalbar
attribute must return
the personal bar BarProp
object.
The scrollbars
attribute must return
the scrollbar BarProp
object.
The statusbar
attribute must return
the status bar BarProp
object.
The toolbar
attribute must return the
toolbar BarProp
object.
For historical reasons, the status
attribute
on the Window
object must, on getting, return the last string it was set to, and on
setting, must set itself to the new value. When the Window
object is created, the
attribute must be set to the empty string. It does not do anything else.
WindowProxy
objectAs mentioned earlier, each browsing context has a
WindowProxy
object. This object is unusual in that all operations that
would be performed on it must be performed on the Window
object of the browsing
context's active document instead. It is thus indistinguishable from that
Window
object in every way until the browsing context is navigated.
There is no WindowProxy
interface object.
The WindowProxy
object allows scripts to act as if each
browsing context had a single Window
object, while still keeping
separate Window
objects for each Document
.
In the following example, the variable x is set to the
WindowProxy
object returned by the window
accessor
on the global object. All of the expressions following the assignment return true, because in
every respect, the WindowProxy
object acts like the underlying Window
object.
var x = window; x instanceof Window; // true x === this; // true
Origins are the fundamental currency of the Web's security model. Two actors in the Web platform that share an origin are assumed to trust each other and to have the same authority. Actors with differing origins are considered potentially hostile versus each other, and are isolated from each other to varying degrees.
For example, if Example Bank's Web site, hosted at bank.example.com
, tries to examine the DOM of Example Charity's Web site, hosted
at charity.example.org
, a SecurityError
exception will be
raised.
The origin of a resource and the effective script origin of a resource are both either opaque identifiers or tuples consisting of a scheme component, a host component, a port component, and optionally extra data.
The extra data could include the certificate of the site when using encrypted connections, to ensure that if the site's secure certificate changes, the origin is considered to change as well.
An origin or effective script origin can be defined as an alias to another origin or effective script origin. The value of the origin or effective script origin is then the value of the origin or effective script origin to which it is an alias.
These characteristics are defined as follows:
The origin and effective script origin of the URL are the origin defined in The Web Origin Concept. [ORIGIN]
Document
objectsDocument
's active sandboxing flag set has
its sandboxed origin browsing context flag setThe origin is a globally unique identifier assigned when the
Document
is created.
The effective script origin is initially an alias to the origin of the
Document
.
Document
was served over the network and has an address that uses a URL
scheme with a server-based naming authorityThe origin is an alias to the
origin of the Document
's address.
The effective script origin is initially an alias to the origin of the
Document
.
Document
was generated from a data:
URL found in another Document
or in a scriptThe origin is an alias to the
origin specified by the incumbent settings object when the navigate
algorithm was invoked, or, if no script was involved, of
the Document
of the element that initiated the navigation to that URL.
The effective script origin is initially an alias to the effective script origin of that
same script settings object or Document
.
Document
is the initial "about:blank
" documentThe origin and effective script origin of the
Document
are those it was assigned when its
browsing context was created.
Document
was created as part of the processing for javascript:
URLsThe origin is an alias to the origin of the active document of the browsing context being navigated when the navigate algorithm was invoked.
The effective script origin is initially an alias to the effective script origin of that
same Document
.
Document
is an iframe
srcdoc
documentThe origin of the Document
is an alias to the origin of the
Document
's browsing context's browsing context
container's Document
.
The effective script origin is initially an alias to the effective script origin of the
Document
's browsing context's browsing context
container's Document
.
Document
was obtained in some other manner (e.g. a data:
URL typed in by the user or that was returned as
the location of an HTTP redirect (or
equivalent in other protocols), a Document
created using the createDocument()
API, etc)The default behavior as defined in the DOM standard applies. [DOM].
The origin is a globally unique identifier assigned when the
Document
is created, and the effective script origin is initially an
alias to the origin of the
Document
.
The effective script origin of a Document
can be
manipulated using the document.domain
IDL
attribute.
img
elementsimg
element's Document
.Images do not have an effective script origin.
audio
and video
elementsDocument
.Media elements do not have an effective script origin.
The origin of a downloadable Web font is an alias to the origin of the absolute URL used to obtain the font (after any redirects). [CSSFONTS] [CSSFONTLOAD]
The origin of a locally installed system font is an alias to the origin of the
Document
in which that font is being used.
Fonts do not have an effective script origin.
Other specifications can override the above definitions by themselves specifying the origin of
a particular URL, Document
, image, media element, or
font.
The Unicode serialization of an origin is the string obtained by applying the following algorithm to the given origin:
If the origin in question is not a scheme/host/port tuple, then return the
literal string "null
" and abort these steps.
Otherwise, let result be the scheme part of the origin tuple.
Append the string "://
" to result.
Apply the IDNA ToUnicode algorithm to each component of the host part of the origin tuple, and append the results — each component, in the same order, separated by "." (U+002E) characters — to result. [RFC3490]
If the port part of the origin tuple gives a port that is different from the default port for the protocol given by the scheme part of the origin tuple, then append a ":" (U+003A) character and the given port, in base ten, to result.
Return result.
The ASCII serialization of an origin is the string obtained by applying the following algorithm to the given origin:
If the origin in question is not a scheme/host/port tuple, then return the
literal string "null
" and abort these steps.
Otherwise, let result be the scheme part of the origin tuple.
Append the string "://
" to result.
Apply the IDNA ToASCII algorithm to the host part of the origin tuple, with both the AllowUnassigned and UseSTD3ASCIIRules flags set, and append the results to result.
If ToASCII fails to convert one of the components of the string, e.g. because it is too long or because it contains invalid characters, then return the empty string and abort these steps. [RFC3490]
If the port part of the origin tuple gives a port that is different from the default port for the protocol given by the scheme part of the origin tuple, then append a ":" (U+003A) character and the given port, in base ten, to result.
Return result.
Two origins are said to be the same origin if the following algorithm returns true:
Let A be the first origin being compared, and B be the second origin being compared.
If A and B are both opaque identifiers, and their value is equal, then return true.
Otherwise, if either A or B or both are opaque identifiers, return false.
If A and B have scheme components that are not identical, return false.
If A and B have host components that are not identical, return false.
If A and B have port components that are not identical, return false.
If either A or B have additional data, but that data is not identical for both, return false.
Return true.
domain
[ = domain ]Returns the current domain used for security checks.
Can be set to a value that removes subdomains, to change the effective script
origin to allow pages on other subdomains of the same domain (if they do the same thing)
to access each other. (Can't be set in sandboxed iframe
s.)
The domain
attribute on
Document
objects must be initialized to the document's domain, if it has
one, and the empty string otherwise. If the document's domain starts with a "[" (U+005B) character and ends with a "]" (U+005D) character, it is
an IPv6 address; these square brackets must be omitted when initializing the attribute's
value.
On getting, the attribute must return its current value, unless the Document
has
no browsing context, in which case it must return the empty string.
On setting, the user agent must run the following algorithm:
If the Document
has no browsing context, throw a
SecurityError
exception and abort these steps.
If the Document
's active sandboxing flag set has its
sandboxed document.domain
browsing context
flag set, throw a SecurityError
exception and abort these steps.
If the new value is an IPv4 or IPv6 address, let new value be the new value. Otherwise, apply the IDNA ToASCII algorithm to the new value, with both the AllowUnassigned and UseSTD3ASCIIRules flags set, and let new value be the result of the ToASCII algorithm.
If ToASCII fails to convert one of the components of the string, e.g. because it is too long
or because it contains invalid characters, then throw a SecurityError
exception and
abort these steps. [RFC3490]
If new value is not exactly equal to the current value of the document.domain
attribute, then run these substeps:
If the current value is an IPv4 or IPv6 address, throw a SecurityError
exception and abort these steps.
If new value, prefixed by a "." (U+002E), does not exactly
match the end of the current value, throw a SecurityError
exception and abort
these steps.
If the new value is an IPv4 or IPv6 address, it cannot match the new value in this way and thus an exception will be thrown here.
If new value matches a suffix in the Public Suffix List, or, if new value, prefixed by a "." (U+002E), matches the end of a suffix in
the Public Suffix List, then throw a SecurityError
exception and abort these
steps. [PSL]
Suffixes must be compared after applying the IDNA ToASCII algorithm to them, with both the AllowUnassigned and UseSTD3ASCIIRules flags set, in an ASCII case-insensitive manner. [RFC3490]
Release the storage mutex.
Set the attribute's value to new value.
If the effective script origin of the Document
is an alias, set it to the value of the effective script
origin (essentially de-aliasing the effective script origin).
If new value is not the empty string, then run these substeps:
Set the host part of the effective script origin tuple of the
Document
to new value.
Set the port part of the effective script origin tuple of the
Document
to "manual override" (a value that, for the purposes of comparing origins, is identical to "manual override" but not
identical to any other value).
The domain of a Document
is the host part
of the document's origin, if the value of that origin is a
scheme/host/port tuple. If it isn't, then the document does not have a domain.
The domain
attribute is used to enable
pages on different hosts of a domain to access each others' DOMs.
Do not use the document.domain
attribute when using shared hosting. If an untrusted third party is able to host an HTTP server at
the same IP address but on a different port, then the same-origin protection that normally
protects two different sites on the same host will fail, as the ports are ignored when comparing
origins after the document.domain
attribute has been
used.
A sandboxing flag set is a set of zero or more of the following flags, which are used to restrict the abilities that potentially untrusted resources have:
This flag prevents content from navigating browsing contexts other than the sandboxed browsing context itself (or browsing contexts further nested inside it), auxiliary browsing contexts (which are protected by the sandboxed auxiliary navigation browsing context flag defined next), and the top-level browsing context (which is protected by the sandboxed top-level navigation browsing context flag defined below).
If the sandboxed auxiliary navigation browsing context flag is not set, then in certain cases the restrictions nonetheless allow popups (new top-level browsing contexts) to be opened. These browsing contexts always have one permitted sandboxed navigator, set when the browsing context is created, which allows the browsing context that created them to actually navigate them. (Otherwise, the sandboxed navigation browsing context flag would prevent them from being navigated even if they were opened.)
This flag prevents content from creating new auxiliary browsing
contexts, e.g. using the target
attribute, or the
window.open()
method.
This flag prevents content from navigating their top-level browsing context and prevents content from closing their top-level browsing context.
When the sandboxed top-level navigation browsing context flag is not set, content can navigate its top-level browsing context, but other browsing contexts are still protected by the sandboxed navigation browsing context flag and possibly the sandboxed auxiliary navigation browsing context flag.
This flag prevents content from instantiating plugins, whether
using the embed
element, the object
element, the applet
element, or through navigation of a nested browsing context, unless
those plugins can be secured.
This flag forces content into a unique origin, thus preventing it from accessing other content from the same origin.
This flag also prevents script from reading from or writing to the
document.cookie
IDL attribute, and blocks access to
localStorage
.
[WEBSTORAGE]
This flag blocks form submission.
This flag disables the Pointer Lock API. [POINTERLOCK]
This flag blocks script execution.
This flag blocks features that trigger automatically, such as automatically playing a video or automatically focusing a form control.
This flag prevents content from using the requestFullscreen()
method.
document.domain
browsing context flagThis flag prevents content from using the document.domain
feature to change the effective script
origin.
When the user agent is to parse a sandboxing directive, given a string input, a sandboxing flag set output, and optionally an allow fullscreen flag, it must run the following steps:
Split input on spaces, to obtain tokens.
Let output be empty.
Add the following flags to output:
The sandboxed auxiliary navigation browsing context flag, unless tokens contains the allow-popups
keyword.
The sandboxed top-level navigation browsing context flag, unless tokens contains the allow-top-navigation
keyword.
The sandboxed origin browsing context flag, unless the tokens contains the allow-same-origin
keyword.
The allow-same-origin
keyword
is intended for two cases.
First, it can be used to allow content from the same site to be sandboxed to disable scripting, while still allowing access to the DOM of the sandboxed content.
Second, it can be used to embed content from a third-party site, sandboxed to prevent that site from opening pop-up windows, etc, without preventing the embedded page from communicating back to its originating site, using the database APIs to store data, etc.
The sandboxed forms browsing context flag, unless tokens contains the allow-forms
keyword.
The sandboxed pointer lock browsing context flag, unless tokens contains the allow-pointer-lock
keyword.
The sandboxed scripts browsing context flag, unless tokens contains the allow-scripts
keyword.
The sandboxed automatic features browsing context flag, unless tokens contains the allow-scripts
keyword (defined above).
This flag is relaxed by the same keyword as scripts, because when scripts are enabled these features are trivially possible anyway, and it would be unfortunate to force authors to use script to do them when sandboxed rather than allowing them to use the declarative features.
The sandboxed fullscreen browsing context flag, unless the allow fullscreen flag was passed to the parse a sandboxing directive flag.
Every top-level browsing context has a popup sandboxing flag set, which is a sandboxing flag set. When a browsing context is created, its popup sandboxing flag set must be empty. It is populated by the rules for choosing a browsing context given a browsing context name.
Every nested browsing context has an iframe
sandboxing flag
set, which is a sandboxing flag set. Which flags in a nested browsing
context's iframe
sandboxing flag set are set at any particular
time is determined by the iframe
element's sandbox
attribute.
Every Document
has an active sandboxing flag set, which is a
sandboxing flag set. When the Document
is created, its active
sandboxing flag set must be empty. It is populated by the navigation
algorithm.
Every resource that is obtained by the navigation algorithm has a forced sandboxing flag set, which is a sandboxing flag set. A resource by default has no flags set in its forced sandboxing flag set, but other specifications can define that certain flags are set.
In particular, the forced sandboxing flag set is used by the Content Security Policy specification. [CSP]
When a user agent is to implement the sandboxing for a Document
, it
must populate Document
's active sandboxing flag set with the union of
the flags that are present in the following sandboxing flag
sets at the time the Document
object is created:
If the Document
's browsing context is a top-level browsing
context, then: the flags set on the browsing context's popup sandboxing
flag set.
If the Document
's browsing context is a nested browsing
context, then: the flags set on the browsing context's
iframe
sandboxing flag set.
If the Document
's browsing context is a nested browsing
context, then: the flags set on the browsing context's parent browsing
context's active document's active sandboxing flag set.
The flags set on the Document
's resource's forced sandboxing flag
set, if it has one.
The sequence of Document
s in a browsing context is its session
history. Each browsing context, including nested browsing contexts, has a distinct session history. A browsing
context's session history consists of a flat list of session history entries. Each session history entry consists, at a
minimum, of a URL, and each entry may in addition have a state object, a
title, a Document
object, form data, a scroll position, and other information
associated with it.
Each entry, when first created, has a Document
. However, when a
Document
is not active, it's possible for it to be
discarded to free resources. The URL and
other data in a session history entry is then used to bring a new
Document
into being to take the place of the original, should the user agent find
itself having to reactivate that Document
.
Titles associated with session history
entries need not have any relation with the current title
of the
Document
. The title of a session history entry is intended to explain
the state of the document at that point, so that the user can navigate the document's history.
URLs without associated state objects are added to the session history as the user (or script) navigates from page to page.
Each Document
object in a browsing context's session
history is associated with a unique History
object which must all model the
same underlying session history.
The history
attribute of the Window
interface must return the object implementing the History
interface for that Window
object's newest
Document
.
A state object is an object representing a user interface state.
Pages can add state objects to the session history. These are then returned to the script when the user (or script) goes back in the history, thus enabling authors to use the "navigation" metaphor even in one-page applications.
State objects are intended to be used for two main purposes:
first, storing a preparsed description of the state in the URL so that in the simple
case an author doesn't have to do the parsing (though one would still need the parsing for
handling URLs passed around by users, so it's only a minor
optimization), and second, so that the author can store state that one wouldn't store in the URL
because it only applies to the current Document
instance and it would have to be
reconstructed if a new Document
were opened.
An example of the latter would be something like keeping track of the precise coordinate from
which a pop-up div
was made to animate, so that if the user goes back, it can be
made to animate to the same location. Or alternatively, it could be used to keep a pointer into a
cache of data that would be fetched from the server based on the information in the
URL, so that when going back and forward, the information doesn't have to be fetched
again.
At any point, one of the entries in the session history is the current entry. This is the entry representing the active document of the browsing context. Which entry is the current entry is changed by the algorithms defined in this specification, e.g. during session history traversal.
The current entry is usually an entry for the address of the Document
. However, it can also be one of
the entries for state objects added to the history by that
document.
An entry with persisted user state is one that also has user-agent defined state. This specification does not specify what kind of state can be stored.
For example, some user agents might want to persist the scroll position, or the values of form controls.
User agents that persist the value of form controls are encouraged to also persist
their directionality (the value of the element's dir
attribute).
This prevents values from being displayed incorrectly after a history traversal when the user had
originally entered the values with an explicit, non-default directionality.
Entries that consist of state objects share the same
Document
as the entry for the page that was active when they were added.
Contiguous entries that differ just by fragment identifier also share the same
Document
.
All entries that share the same Document
(and that are therefore
merely different states of one particular document) are contiguous by definition.
Each Document
in a browsing context can also have a latest
entry. This is the entry or that Document
that was most the recently traversed
to. When a Document
is created, it initially has no latest entry.
User agents may discard the Document
objects of entries other than the current entry that are not referenced from any
script, reloading the pages afresh when the user or script navigates back to such pages. This
specification does not specify when user agents should discard Document
objects and
when they should cache them.
Entries that have had their Document
objects discarded must, for the purposes of
the algorithms given below, act as if they had not. When the user or script navigates back or
forwards to a page which has no in-memory DOM objects, any other entries that shared the same
Document
object with it must share the new object as well.
History
interfaceinterface History { readonly attribute long length; readonly attribute any state; void go(optional long delta); void back(); void forward(); void pushState(any data, DOMString title, optional DOMString? url = null); void replaceState(any data, DOMString title, optional DOMString? url = null); };
history
. length
Returns the number of entries in the joint session history.
history
. state
Returns the current state object.
history
. go
( [ delta ] )Goes back or forward the specified number of steps in the joint session history.
A zero delta will reload the current page.
If the delta is out of range, does nothing.
history
. back
()Goes back one step in the joint session history.
If there is no previous page, does nothing.
history
. forward
()Goes forward one step in the joint session history.
If there is no next page, does nothing.
history
. pushState
(data, title [, url ] )Pushes the given data onto the session history, with the given title, and, if provided and not null, the given URL.
history
. replaceState
(data, title [, url ] )Updates the current entry in the session history to have the given data, title, and, if provided and not null, URL.
The joint session history of a top-level browsing context is the union
of all the session histories of all browsing contexts of all the fully active Document
objects that share that top-level browsing context, with all the entries that are
current entries in their respective session histories removed except for the current entry of the joint session
history.
The current entry of the joint session history is the entry that most recently became a current entry in its session history.
Entries in the joint session history are ordered chronologically by the time they were added to their respective session histories. Each entry has an index; the earliest entry has index 0, and the subsequent entries are numbered with consecutively increasing integers (1, 2, 3, etc).
Since each Document
in a browsing context might have a
different event loop, the actual state of the joint session history can
be someone nebulous. For example, two sibling iframe
elements could both traverse from one unique origin to another at the same time,
so their precise order might not be well-defined; similarly, since they might only find out about
each other later, they might disagree about the length of the joint session
history.
All the getters and setters for attributes, and all the methods, defined on the
History
interface, when invoked on a History
object associated with a
Document
that is not fully active, must throw a
SecurityError
exception instead of operating as described below.
The length
attribute of the
History
interface must return the number of entries in the top-level browsing
context's joint session history.
The actual entries are not accessible from script.
The state
attribute of the
History
interface must return the last value it was set to by the user agent.
Initially, its value must be null.
When the go(delta)
method is
invoked, if the argument to the method was omitted or has the value zero, the user agent must act
as if the location.reload()
method was called instead.
Otherwise, the user agent must traverse the history by a delta whose value is the
value of the method's argument.
When the back()
method is invoked, the user
agent must traverse the history by a delta −1.
When the forward()
method is invoked, the
user agent must traverse the history by a delta +1.
Each top-level browsing context has a session history traversal queue, initially empty, to which tasks can be added.
Each top-level browsing context, when created, must asynchronously begin running the following algorithm, known as the session history event loop for that top-level browsing context:
Wait until this top-level browsing context's session history traversal queue is not empty.
Pull the first task from this top-level browsing context's session history traversal queue, and execute it.
Return to the first step of this algorithm.
The session history event loop helps coordinate cross-browsing-context transitions of the joint session history: since each browsing context might, at any particular time, have a different event loop (this can happen if the user agent has more than one event loop per unit of related browsing contexts), transitions would otherwise have to involve cross-event-loop synchronisation.
To traverse the history by a delta delta, the user agent must append a task to this top-level browsing context's session history traversal queue, the task consisting of running the following steps:
Let delta be the argument to the method.
If the index of the current entry of the joint session history plus delta is less than zero or greater than or equal to the number of items in the joint session history, then abort these steps.
Let specified entry be the entry in the joint session history whose index is the sum of delta and the index of the current entry of the joint session history.
Let specified browsing context be the browsing context of the specified entry.
If the specified browsing context's active document's unload a document algorithm is currently running, abort these steps.
Queue a task that consists of running the following substeps. The relevant event loop is that of the specified browsing context's active document. The task source for the queued task is the history traversal task source.
If there is an ongoing attempt to navigate specified browsing context
that has not yet matured (i.e. it has not passed the
point of making its Document
the active document), then cancel that
attempt to navigate the browsing context.
If the specified browsing context's active document is not
the same Document
as the Document
of the specified
entry, then run these substeps:
Prompt to unload the active document of the specified browsing context. If the user refused to allow the document to be unloaded, then abort these steps.
Unload the active document of the specified browsing context with the recycle parameter set to false.
Traverse the history of the specified browsing context to the specified entry.
When the user navigates through a browsing context, e.g. using a browser's back and forward buttons, the user agent must traverse the history by a delta equivalent to the action specified by the user.
The pushState(data, title, url)
method adds a state object entry to
the history.
The replaceState(data, title, url)
method updates the state object,
title, and optionally the URL of the current entry in the history.
When either of these methods is invoked, the user agent must run the following steps:
Let cloned data be a structured clone of the specified data. If this throws an exception, then rethrow that exception and abort these steps.
If the third argument is not null, run these substeps:
SecurityError
exception and abort these steps.SecurityError
exception and abort these steps.SecurityError
exception
and abort these steps. (This prevents sandboxed content from spoofing other pages on the same
origin.)Let new URL be the resulting absolute URL.
For the purposes of the comparisons in the above substeps, the path and query components can only be the same if the scheme component of both parsed URLs are relative schemes.
If the third argument is null, then let new URL be the URL of the current entry.
If the method invoked was the pushState()
method:
Remove all the entries in the browsing context's session history after the current entry. If the current entry is the last entry in the session history, then no entries are removed.
This doesn't necessarily have to affect the user agent's user interface.
Remove any tasks queued by the history traversal
task source that are associated with any Document
objects in the
top-level browsing context's document family.
If appropriate, update the current entry to reflect any state that the user agent wishes to persist. The entry is then said to be an entry with persisted user state.
Add a state object entry to the session history, after the current entry, with cloned data as the state object, the given title as the title, and new URL as the URL of the entry.
Update the current entry to be this newly added entry.
Otherwise, if the method invoked was the replaceState()
method:
Update the current entry in the session history so that cloned data is the entry's new state object, the given title is the new title, and new URL is the entry's new URL.
If the current entry in the session history represents a non-GET request (e.g. it was the result of a POST submission) then update it to instead represent a GET request (or equivalent).
Set the document's address to new URL.
Since this is neither a navigation of the
browsing context nor a history traversal,
it does not cause a hashchange
event to be fired.
Set history.state
to a structured clone
of cloned data.
Let the latest entry of the Document
of the current
entry be the current entry.
The title is purely advisory. User agents might use the title in the user interface.
User agents may limit the number of state objects added to the session history per page. If a
page hits the UA-defined limit, user agents must remove the entry immediately after the first
entry for that Document
object in the session history after having added the new
entry. (Thus the state history acts as a FIFO buffer for eviction, but as a LIFO buffer for
navigation.)
Consider a game where the user can navigate along a line, such that the user is always at some coordinate, and such that the user can bookmark the page corresponding to a particular coordinate, to return to it later.
A static page implementing the x=5 position in such a game could look like the following:
<!DOCTYPE HTML> <!-- this is http://example.com/line?x=5 --> <title>Line Game - 5</title> <p>You are at coordinate 5 on the line.</p> <p> <a href="?x=6">Advance to 6</a> or <a href="?x=4">retreat to 4</a>? </p>
The problem with such a system is that each time the user clicks, the whole page has to be reloaded. Here instead is another way of doing it, using script:
<!DOCTYPE HTML> <!-- this starts off as http://example.com/line?x=5 --> <title>Line Game - 5</title> <p>You are at coordinate <span id="coord">5</span> on the line.</p> <p> <a href="?x=6" onclick="go(1); return false;">Advance to 6</a> or <a href="?x=4" onclick="go(-1); return false;">retreat to 4</a>? </p> <script> var currentPage = 5; // prefilled by server function go(d) { setupPage(currentPage + d); history.pushState(currentPage, document.title, '?x=' + currentPage); } onpopstate = function(event) { setupPage(event.state); } function setupPage(page) { currentPage = page; document.title = 'Line Game - ' + currentPage; document.getElementById('coord').textContent = currentPage; document.links[0].href = '?x=' + (currentPage+1); document.links[0].textContent = 'Advance to ' + (currentPage+1); document.links[1].href = '?x=' + (currentPage-1); document.links[1].textContent = 'retreat to ' + (currentPage-1); } </script>
In systems without script, this still works like the previous example. However, users that do have script support can now navigate much faster, since there is no network access for the same experience. Furthermore, contrary to the experience the user would have with just a naïve script-based approach, bookmarking and navigating the session history still work.
In the example above, the data argument to the pushState()
method is the same information as would be sent
to the server, but in a more convenient form, so that the script doesn't have to parse the URL
each time the user navigates.
Applications might not use the same title for a session history entry as the
value of the document's title
element at that time. For example, here is a simple
page that shows a block in the title
element. Clearly, when navigating backwards to
a previous state the user does not go back in time, and therefore it would be inappropriate to
put the time in the session history title.
<!DOCTYPE HTML> <TITLE>Line</TITLE> <SCRIPT> setInterval(function () { document.title = 'Line - ' + new Date(); }, 1000); var i = 1; function inc() { set(i+1); history.pushState(i, 'Line - ' + i); } function set(newI) { i = newI; document.forms.F.I.value = newI; } </SCRIPT> <BODY ONPOPSTATE="set(event.state)"> <FORM NAME=F> State: <OUTPUT NAME=I>1</OUTPUT> <INPUT VALUE="Increment" TYPE=BUTTON ONCLICK="inc()"> </FORM>
Location
interfaceEach Document
object in a browsing context's session history is
associated with a unique instance of a Location
object.
location
[ = value ]location
[ = value ]Returns a Location
object with the current page's location.
Can be set, to navigate to another page.
The location
attribute of the
Document
interface must return the Location
object for that
Document
object, if it is in a browsing context, and null otherwise.
The location
attribute of the Window
interface must return the Location
object for that Window
object's
Document
.
Location
objects provide a representation of the address of the active document of their Document
's
browsing context, and allow the current entry of the browsing
context's session history to be changed, by adding or replacing entries in the history
object.
[Unforgeable] interface Location { void assign(DOMString url); void replace(DOMString url); void reload(); }; Location implements URLUtils;
assign
(url)Navigates to the given page.
replace
(url)Removes the current page from the session history and navigates to the given page.
reload
()Reloads the current page.
The relevant Document
is the Location
object's associated
Document
object's browsing context's active document.
When the assign(url)
method is invoked, the UA must resolve the argument, relative
to the API base URL specified by the entry settings object, and if that is
successful, must navigate the browsing
context to the specified url, with exceptions enabled. If the browsing context's
session history contains only one Document
, and that was the
about:blank
Document
created when the browsing context was
created, then the navigation must be done with replacement enabled.
When the replace(url)
method is invoked, the UA must resolve the argument, relative
to the API base URL specified by the entry settings object, and if that is
successful, navigate the browsing
context to the specified url with replacement enabled and exceptions enabled.
Navigation for the assign()
and replace()
methods must be done with the responsible browsing context specified by
the incumbent settings object as the source
browsing context.
If the resolving step of the assign()
and replace()
methods is not successful, then the user agent must
instead throw a SyntaxError
exception.
When the reload()
method is invoked, the
user agent must run the appropriate steps from the following list:
resize
event in response to the user resizing the browsing
contextRepaint the browsing context and abort these steps.
iframe
srcdoc
documentReprocess the iframe
attributes of the browsing context's browsing context
container.
Perform an overridden reload, with the browsing context being navigated as the responsible browsing context.
Navigate the browsing context to the document's address with replacement enabled and exceptions enabled. The source browsing context must be the browsing context being navigated.
When a user requests that the active document of a browsing context
be reloaded through a user interface element, the user agent should navigate the browsing context to the same resource as that
Document
, with replacement enabled. In the case of non-idempotent
methods (e.g. HTTP POST), the user agent should prompt the user to confirm the operation first,
since otherwise transactions (e.g. purchases or database modifications) could be repeated. User
agents may allow the user to explicitly override any caches when reloading. If browsing
context's active document's reload override flag is set, then the
user agent may instead perform an overridden reload rather than the navigation
described in this paragraph (with the browsing context being reloaded as the
source browsing context).
The Location
interface also supports the URLUtils
interface. [URL]
When the object is created, and whenever the the
address of the relevant Document
changes, the user agent must invoke
the object's URLUtils
interface's set the
input algorithm with the address of the
relevant Document
as the given value.
The object's URLUtils
interface's get the
base algorithm must return the API base URL specified by the entry
settings object, if there is one, or null otherwise.
The object's URLUtils
interface's query
encoding is the document's character encoding.
When the object's URLUtils
interface invokes its update steps with the string value, the user
agent must run the following steps:
If any of the following conditions are met, let mode be normal navigation; otherwise, let it be replace navigation:
Location
object's relevant Document
has
completely loaded, orclick
event was trusted,
orclick
event is being handled.If mode is normal navigation, then act as if the assign()
method had been called with value
as its argument. Otherwise, act as if the replace()
method had been called with value as its argument.
This section describes a security model that is underdefined, imperfect, and
does not match implementations. Work is ongoing to attempt to resolve this, but in the meantime,
please do not rely on this section for precision. Implementors are urged to send their feedback on
how cross-origin cross-global access to Window
and Location
objects
should work. See bug 20701.
User agents must throw a SecurityError
exception whenever any
properties of a Location
object are accessed when the entry settings object specifies
an effective script origin that is not the same as
the Location
object's associated Document
's browsing
context's active document's effective script origin, with the
following exceptions:
href
setter, if the responsible browsing context
specified by the entry
settings object is familiar with the browsing
context with which the Location
object is associated
replace()
method, if the responsible
browsing context specified by the entry
settings object is familiar with the
browsing context with which the Location
object is associated
Location
object or indirectly via
one of those properties (e.g. toString()
, which is defined via the stringifier
keyword), if the effective script
origin specified by the entry settings object is the same origin as the Location
object's associated
Document
's effective script origin
When the effective script origin specified by the entry settings object is different than a
Location
object's associated Document
's effective script
origin, the user agent must act as if any changes to that Location
object's
properties, getters, setters, etc, were not present, and as if all the properties of that
Location
object had their [[Enumerable]] attribute set to false.
For members that return objects (including function objects), each distinct effective
script origin that is not the same origin as the Location
object's Document
's effective script origin must be provided with a
separate set of objects. These objects must have the prototype chain appropriate for the script
for which the objects are created (not those that would be appropriate for scripts whose
settings object specifies a global object that is the Location
object's Document
's
Window
object).
This section is non-normative.
The History
interface is not meant to place restrictions on how implementations
represent the session history to the user.
For example, session history could be implemented in a tree-like manner, with each page having
multiple "forward" pages. This specification doesn't define how the linear list of pages in the
history
object are derived from the actual session history as
seen from the user's perspective.
Similarly, a page containing two iframe
s has a history
object distinct from the iframe
s' history
objects, despite the fact that typical Web browsers present the
user with just one "Back" button, with a session history that interleaves the navigation of the
two inner frames and the outer page.
Security: It is suggested that to avoid letting a page "hijack" the history
navigation facilities of a UA by abusing pushState()
,
the UA provide the user with a way to jump back to the previous page (rather than just going back
to the previous state). For example, the back button could have a drop down showing just the pages
in the session history, and not showing any of the states. Similarly, an aural browser could have
two "back" commands, one that goes back to the previous state, and one that jumps straight back to
the previous page.
In addition, a user agent could ignore calls to pushState()
that are invoked on a timer, or from event
listeners that are not triggered in response to a clear user action, or that are invoked in rapid
succession.
Features described in this section can at times prove difficult to test in order to assess interoperability. As a result, at present, their test coverage is less than much of the other features with all the stability implications this may have.
Certain actions cause the browsing context to navigate to a new resource. A user agent may provide various ways for the user to explicitly cause a browsing context to navigate, in addition to those defined in this specification.
For example, following a hyperlink,
form submission, and the window.open()
and location.assign()
methods can all cause a browsing context to
navigate.
A resource has a URL, but that might not be the only information necessary
to identify it. For example, a form submission that uses HTTP POST would also have the HTTP method
and payload. Similarly, an iframe
srcdoc
document needs to know the data it is to use.
Navigation always involves source browsing context, which is the browsing context which was responsible for starting the navigation.
When a browsing context is navigated to a new resource, the user agent must run the following steps:
Release the storage mutex.
If the source browsing context is not allowed to navigate the browsing context being navigated, then abort these steps.
If these steps are aborted here, the user agent may instead offer to open the new resource in a new top-level browsing context or in the top-level browsing context of the source browsing context, at the user's option, in which case the user agent must navigate that designated top-level browsing context to the new resource as if the user had requested it independently.
Doing so, however, can be dangerous, as it means that the user is overriding the author's explicit request to sandbox the content.
If the navigate algorithm was invoked with exceptions enabled, and it
is aborted on this step, then in addition to aborting this algorithm, the user agent must also
throw a SecurityError
exception.
If there is a preexisting attempt to navigate the browsing context, and the source browsing context is the same as the browsing context being navigated, and that attempt is currently running the unload a document algorithm, and the origin of the URL of the resource being loaded in that navigation is not the same origin as the origin of the URL of the resource being loaded in this navigation, then abort these steps without affecting the preexisting attempt to navigate the browsing context.
If a task queued by the traverse the history by a delta algorithm is running the unload a document algorithm for the active document of the browsing context being navigated, then abort these steps without affecting the unload a document algorithm or the aforementioned history traversal task.
If the prompt to unload a document algorithm is being run for the active document of the browsing context being navigated, then abort these steps without affecting the prompt to unload a document algorithm.
Let gone async be false.
The handle redirects step later in this algorithm can in certain cases jump back to the step labeled fragment identifiers. Since, between those two steps, this algorithm goes from operating synchronously in the context of the calling task to operating asynchronously independent of the event loop, some of the intervening steps need to be able to handle both being synchronous and being asynchronous. The gone async flag is thus used to make these steps aware of which mode they are operating in.
If gone async is false, cancel any preexisting but not yet mature attempt to navigate the browsing
context, including canceling any instances of the fetch algorithm started by
those attempts. If one of those attempts has already created a new Document
object, abort that Document
also. (Navigation attempts that have matured already have session history entries, and are
therefore handled during the update the session history with the new page algorithm,
later.)
If the new resource is to be handled using a mechanism that does not affect the browsing context, e.g. ignoring the navigation request altogether because the specified scheme is not one of the supported protocols, then abort these steps and proceed with that mechanism instead.
If gone async is false, prompt
to unload the Document
object. If the user refused to allow the
document to be unloaded, then abort these steps.
If this instance of the navigation algorithm gets canceled while this step is running, the prompt to unload a document algorithm must nonetheless be run to completion.
If gone async is false, abort the active document of the browsing context.
If the new resource is to be handled by displaying some sort of inline content, e.g. an error message because the specified scheme is not one of the supported protocols, or an inline prompt to allow the user to select a registered handler for the given scheme, then display the inline content and abort these steps.
In the case of a registered handler being used, the algorithm will be reinvoked with a new URL to handle the request.
If the browsing context being navigated is a nested browsing
context, then put it in the delaying load
events
mode.
The user agent must take this nested browsing context out of the delaying
load
events mode when this navigation algorithm later matures, or when it terminates (whether due to having
run all the steps, or being canceled, or being aborted), whichever happens first.
This is the step that attempts to obtain the resource, if necessary. Jump to the first appropriate substep:
object
element's new child browsing context)Skip this step. The data is already available.
javascript
Queue a task to run these "javascript:
URL" steps, associated with the active
document of the browsing context being navigated:
If the origin of the source browsing context is not the same origin as the origin of the active document of the browsing context being navigated, then act as if the result of evaluating the script was the void value, and jump to the step labeled process results below.
Apply the URL parser to the URL being navigated.
Let parsed URL be the result of the URL parser.
Let script source be the empty string.
Append parsed URL's scheme data component to script source.
If parsed URL's query component is not null, then first append a "?" (U+003F) character to script source, and then append parsed URL's query component to script source.
If parsed URL's fragment component is not null, then first append a "#" (U+0023) character to script source, and then append parsed URL's fragment component to script source.
Replace script source with the result of applying the percent decode algorithm to script source.
Replace script source with the result of applying the UTF-8 decode algorithm to script source.
Let address be the address of the active document of the browsing context being navigated.
Create a script, using script source as the script
source, address as the script source URL, JavaScript as the scripting
language, and the script settings object of the Window
object of
the active document of the browsing context being navigated.
Let result be the return value of the code entry-point of this script. If an exception was thrown, let result be void instead. (The result will be void also if scripting is disabled.)
Process results: If the result of executing the script is void (there is no return value), then the result of obtaining the resource for the URL is equivalent to an HTTP resource with an HTTP 204 No Content response.
Otherwise, the result of obtaining the resource for the URL is equivalent to an HTTP resource with a 200 OK
response whose Content-Type metadata is
text/html
and whose response body is the return value converted to a string
value.
When it comes time to set the document's address in the navigation algorithm, use address as the override URL.
The task source for this task is the DOM manipulation task source.
So for example a javascript:
URL in an href
attribute of an
a
element would only be evaluated when the link was followed, while such a URL in the src
attribute of an iframe
element would be
evaluated in the context of the iframe
's own nested browsing
context when the iframe
is being set up; once evaluated, its return value
(if it was not void) would replace that browsing context's document, thus also
changing the Window
object of that browsing context.
Fetch the resource from the most appropriate application cache of those that match.
For example, imagine an HTML page with an associated application cache displaying an image and a form, where the image is also used by several other application caches. If the user right-clicks on the image and chooses "View Image", then the user agent could decide to show the image from any of those caches, but it is likely that the most useful cache for the user would be the one that was used for the aforementioned HTML page. On the other hand, if the user submits the form, and the form does a POST submission, then the user agent will not use an application cache at all; the submission will be made to the network.
Fetch the new resource, with the manual redirect flag set.
If the steps above invoked the fetch algorith, the following requirements also apply:
If the resource is being fetched using a method other than one equivalent to HTTP's GET, or, if the navigation algorithm was invoked as a result of the form submission algorithm, then the fetching algorithm must be invoked from the origin of the active document of the source browsing context, if any.
Otherwise, if the browsing context being navigated is a child browsing context, then the fetching algorithm must be invoked from the browsing context scope origin of the browsing context container of the browsing context being navigated, if it has one.
If gone async is false, return to whatever algorithm invoked the navigation steps and continue running these steps asynchronously.
Let gone async be true.
Wait for one or more bytes to be available or for the user agent to establish that the resource in question is empty. During this time, the user agent may allow the user to cancel this navigation attempt or start other navigation attempts.
Fallback in prefer-online mode: If the resource was not fetched from an application cache, and was to be fetched using HTTP GET or equivalent, and there are relevant application caches that are identified by a URL with the same origin as the URL in question, and that have this URL as one of their entries, excluding entries marked as foreign, and whose mode is prefer-online, and the user didn't cancel the navigation attempt during the earlier step, and the navigation attempt failed (e.g. the server returned a 4xx or 5xx status code or equivalent, or there was a DNS error), then:
Let candidate be the resource identified by the URL in question from the most appropriate application cache of those that match.
If candidate is not marked as foreign, then the user agent must discard the failed load and instead continue along these steps using candidate as the resource. The user agent may indicate to the user that the original page load failed, and that the page used was a previously cached resource.
This does not affect the address of the resource from which Request-URIs are obtained, as used to set the document's referrer in the create a Document object steps below; they still use the value as computed by the original fetch algorithm.
Fallback for fallback entries: If the resource was not fetched from an application cache, and was to be fetched using HTTP GET or equivalent, and its URL matches the fallback namespace of one or more relevant application caches, and the most appropriate application cache of those that match does not have an entry in its online whitelist that has the same origin as the resource's URL and that is a prefix match for the resource's URL, and the user didn't cancel the navigation attempt during the previous step, and the navigation attempt failed (e.g. the server returned a 4xx or 5xx status code or equivalent, or there was a DNS error), then:
Let candidate be the fallback resource specified for the fallback namespace in question. If multiple application caches match, the user agent must use the fallback of the most appropriate application cache of those that match.
If candidate is not marked as foreign, then the user agent must discard the failed load and instead continue along these steps using candidate as the resource. The document's address, if appropriate, will still be the originally requested URL, not the fallback URL, but the user agent may indicate to the user that the original page load failed, that the page used was a fallback resource, and what the URL of the fallback resource actually is.
This does not affect the address of the resource from which Request-URIs are obtained, as used to set the document's referrer in the create a Document object steps below; they still use the value as computed by the original fetch algorithm.
Resource handling: If the resource's out-of-band metadata (e.g. HTTP headers), not counting any type information (such as the Content-Type HTTP header), requires some sort of processing that will not affect the browsing context, then perform that processing and abort these steps.
Such processing might be triggered by, amongst other things, the following:
Responses with HTTP Content-Disposition
headers
specifying the attachment
disposition type must be handled as a
download.
HTTP 401 responses that do not include a challenge recognized by the user agent must be processed as if they had no challenge, e.g. rendering the entity body as if the response had been 200 OK.
User agents may show the entity body of an HTTP 401 response even when the response does include a recognized challenge, with the option to login being included in a non-modal fashion, to enable the information provided by the server to be used by the user before authenticating. Similarly, user agents should allow the user to authenticate (in a non-modal fashion) against authentication challenges included in other responses such as HTTP 200 OK responses, effectively allowing resources to present HTTP login forms without requiring their use.
Let type be the sniffed type of the resource.
If the user agent has been configured to process resources of the given type using some mechanism other than rendering the content in a browsing context, then skip this step. Otherwise, if the type is one of the following types, jump to the appropriate entry in the following list, and process the resource as described there:
text/html
"application/xml
"text/xml
"image/svg+xml
"application/xhtml+xml
"+xml
" that is not an explicitly
supported XML typetext/plain
"multipart/x-mixed-replace
"An explicitly supported XML type is one for which the user agent is configured to
use an external application to render the content (either a plugin rendering
directly in the browsing context, or a separate application), or one for which the
user agent has dedicated processing rules (e.g. a Web browser with a built-in Atom feed viewer
would be said to explicitly support the application/atom+xml
MIME type), or one for
which the user agent has a dedicated handler (e.g. one registered using registerContentHandler()
).
Setting the document's address: If there is no
override URL, then any Document
created by these steps must have its
address set to the URL that was
originally to be fetched, ignoring any other data that was used to
obtain the resource (e.g. the entity body in the case of a POST submission is not part of
the document's address, nor is the URL of the fallback resource in the case of the
original load having failed and that URL having been found to match a fallback namespace). However, if there is
an override URL, then any Document
created by these steps must have
its address set to that URL
instead.
An override URL is set when dereferencing a javascript:
URL and when
performing an overridden reload.
Creating a new Document
object: when
a Document
is created as part of the above steps, the user agent must additionally
run the following algorithm as part of creating the new object:
Create a new Window
object, and associate it with the
Document
, with one exception: if the browsing context's only entry in
its session history is the about:blank
Document
that was
added when the browsing context was created, and navigation is occurring with
replacement enabled, and that Document
has the same
origin as the new Document
, then use the Window
object of that
Document
instead, and change the document
attribute of the Window
object to point to the new Document
.
Set the document's referrer to the address of the resource from which Request-URIs are obtained as determined when the fetch algorithm obtained the resource, if that algorithm was used and determined such a value; otherwise, set it to the empty string.
Implement the sandboxing for the Document
.
If the active sandboxing flag set of the Document
's
browsing context or any of its ancestor
browsing contexts (if any) have the sandboxed fullscreen browsing context
flag set, then skip this step.
If the Document
's browsing context has a browsing context
container and either it is not an iframe
element, or its
Document
does not have the fullscreen enabled flag set, then also
skip this step.
Otherwise, set the Document
's fullscreen enabled flag.
Otherwise, the document's type is such that the resource will not affect the browsing context, e.g. because the resource is to be handed to an external application or because it is an unknown type that will be processed as a download. Process the resource appropriately.
Some of the sections below, to which the above algorithm defers in certain cases, require the
user agent to update the session history with the new page. When a user agent is
required to do this, it must queue a task (associated with the Document
object of the current entry, not the new one) to run the following steps:
Unload the Document
object of the
current entry, with the recycle parameter set to false.
If this instance of the navigation algorithm is canceled while this step is running the unload a document algorithm, then the unload a document algorithm must be allowed to run to completion, but this instance of the navigation algorithm must not run beyond this step. (In particular, for instance, the cancelation of this algorithm does not abort any event dispatch or script execution occurring as part of unloading the document or its descendants.)
Replace the Document
of the entry being updated, and any other entries
that referenced the same document as that entry, with the new Document
.
Traverse the history to the new entry.
This can only happen if the entry being updated is not the current
entry, and can never happen with replacement enabled. (It happens when the
user tried to traverse to a session history entry that no longer had a Document
object.)
Remove all the entries in the browsing context's session history after the current entry. If the current entry is the last entry in the session history, then no entries are removed.
This doesn't necessarily have to affect the user agent's user interface.
Append a new entry at the end of the History
object representing the new
resource and its Document
object and related state.
Traverse the history to the new entry. If the navigation was initiated with replacement enabled, then the traversal must itself be initiated with replacement enabled.
The navigation algorithm has now matured.
Fragment identifier loop: Spin the event loop for a user-agent-defined amount of time, as desired by the user agent implementor. (This is intended to allow the user agent to optimize the user experience in the face of performance concerns.)
If the Document
object has no parser, or its parser has stopped parsing, or the user agent has reason to believe the user is no longer
interested in scrolling to the fragment identifier, then abort these steps.
Scroll to the fragment identifier given in the document's address. If this fails to find an indicated part of the document, then return to the fragment identifier loop step.
The task source for this task is the networking task source.
When an HTML document is to be loaded in a browsing context, the user agent must
queue a task to create a Document
object, mark it as being
an HTML document, set its content type to "text/html
",
create an HTML parser, and associate it with the document. Each task that the networking task source places on the
task queue while the fetching algorithm runs must then
fill the parser's input byte stream with the fetched bytes and cause the HTML
parser to perform the appropriate processing of the input stream.
The input byte stream converts bytes into characters for use in the tokenizer. This process relies, in part, on character encoding information found in the real Content-Type metadata of the resource; the "sniffed type" is not used for this purpose.
When no more bytes are available, the user agent must queue a task for the parser
to process the implied EOF character, which eventually causes a load
event to be fired.
After creating the Document
object, but before any script execution, certainly
before the parser stops, the user agent must update the
session history with the new page.
Application cache selection happens in the HTML parser.
The task source for the two tasks mentioned in this section must be the networking task source.
When faced with displaying an XML file inline, user agents must first create a
Document
object, following the requirements of the XML and Namespaces in XML
recommendations, RFC 7303, DOM, and other relevant specifications. [XML] [XMLNS] [RFC7303] [DOM]
The actual HTTP headers and other metadata, not the headers as mutated or implied by the algorithms given in this specification, are the ones that must be used when determining the character encoding according to the rules given in the above specifications. Once the character encoding is established, the document's character encoding must be set to that character encoding.
If the root element, as parsed according to the XML specifications cited above, is found to be
an html
element with an attribute manifest
whose value is not the empty string, then, as soon as the element is inserted into the document, the user agent must resolve the value of that attribute relative to that element, and if
that is successful, must apply the URL serializer
algorithm to the resulting parsed URL with the exclude fragment flag set to
obtain manifest URL, and then run the application cache selection algorithm with manifest URL as the manifest URL, passing in the newly-created
Document
. Otherwise, if the attribute is absent, its value is the empty string, or
resolving its value fails, then as soon as the root element is inserted into the document, the user agent must run the application cache selection algorithm with no manifest, and
passing in the Document
.
Because the processing of the manifest
attribute happens only once the root element is parsed, any URLs referenced by processing
instructions before the root element (such as <?xml-stylesheet?>
and
<?xbl?>
PIs) will be fetched from the network and cannot be
cached.
User agents may examine the namespace of the root Element
node of this
Document
object to perform namespace-based dispatch to alternative processing tools,
e.g. determining that the content is actually a syndication feed and passing it to a feed handler.
If such processing is to take place, abort the steps in this section, and jump to the next step (labeled non-document content) in the
navigate steps above.
Otherwise, then, with the newly created Document
, the user agent must update
the session history with the new page. User agents may do this before the complete document
has been parsed (thus achieving incremental rendering), and must do this before any scripts
are to be executed.
Error messages from the parse process (e.g. XML namespace well-formedness errors) may be
reported inline by mutating the Document
.
When a plain text document is to be loaded in a browsing context, the user agent
must queue a task to create a Document
object, mark it as
being an HTML document, set its content type to "text/plain
",
create an HTML parser, associate it with the document, act as if the tokenizer had
emitted a start tag token with the tag name "pre" followed by a single "LF" (U+000A)
character, and switch the HTML parser's tokenizer to the PLAINTEXT
state. Each task that the networking task
source places on the task queue while the fetching
algorithm runs must then fill the parser's input byte stream with the fetched
bytes and cause the HTML parser to perform the appropriate processing of the input
stream.
The rules for how to convert the bytes of the plain text document into actual characters, and the rules for actually rendering the text to the user, are defined in RFC 2046, RFC 3676, and subsequent versions thereof. [RFC2046] [RFC3676]
The document's character encoding must be set to the character encoding used to decode the document.
Upon creation of the Document
object, the user agent must run the application cache selection algorithm with no manifest, and
passing in the newly-created Document
.
When no more bytes are available, the user agent must queue a task for the parser
to process the implied EOF character, which eventually causes a load
event to be fired.
After creating the Document
object, but potentially before the page has finished
parsing, the user agent must update the session history with the new page.
User agents may add content to the head
element of the Document
, e.g.
linking to a style sheet or an XBL binding, providing script, giving the document a
title
, etc.
In particular, if the user agent supports the Format=Flowed
feature of RFC 3676 then the user agent would need to apply extra styling to cause the text to
wrap correctly and to handle the quoting feature. This could be performed using, e.g., an XBL
binding or a CSS extension.
The task source for the two tasks mentioned in this section must be the networking task source.
multipart/x-mixed-replace
resourcesWhen a resource with the type multipart/x-mixed-replace
is to be loaded in a
browsing context, the user agent must parse the resource using the rules for
multipart types. [RFC2046]
For each body part obtained from the resource, the user agent must run a new instance of the
navigate algorithm, starting from the resource handling step, using the new
body part as the resource being navigated, with replacement enabled if a previous
body part from the same resource resulted in a Document
object being created, and otherwise using the same setup as the
navigate attempt that caused this section to be invoked in the first place.
For the purposes of algorithms processing these body parts as if they were complete stand-alone resources, the user agent must act as if there were no more bytes for those resources whenever the boundary following the body part is reached.
Thus, load
events (and for that matter unload
events) do fire for each body part loaded.
When an image, video, or audio resource is to be loaded in a browsing context, the
user agent should create a Document
object, mark it as being an HTML document, set its content type to the sniffed MIME type of the resource
(type in the navigate algorithm), append an html
element to the Document
, append a head
element and a body
element to the html
element, append an element host element for
the media, as described below, to the body
element, and set the appropriate attribute
of the element host element, as described below, to the address of the image,
video, or audio resource.
The element host element to create for the media is the element given in the table below in the second cell of the row whose first cell describes the media. The appropriate attribute to set is the one given by the third cell in that same row.
Type of media | Element for the media | Appropriate attribute |
---|---|---|
Image | img
| src
|
Video | video
| src
|
Audio | audio
| src
|
Then, the user agent must act as if it had stopped parsing.
Upon creation of the Document
object, the user agent must run the application cache selection algorithm with no manifest, and
passing in the newly-created Document
.
After creating the Document
object, but potentially before the page has finished
fully loading, the user agent must update the session history with the new page.
User agents may add content to the head
element of the Document
, or
attributes to the element host element, e.g. to link to a style sheet or an
XBL binding, to provide a script, to give the document a title
, to make the media
autoplay, etc.
When a resource that requires an external resource to be rendered is to be loaded in a
browsing context, the user agent should create a Document
object, mark it as being an HTML document and mark it
as being a plugin document, set its content
type to the sniffed MIME type of the resource (type in the
navigate algorithm), append an html
element to the
Document
, append a head
element and a body
element to the
html
element, append an embed
to the body
element, and set
the src
attribute of the embed
element to the
address of the resource.
The term plugin document is used by the Content Security Policy
specification as part of the mechanism that ensures iframe
s can't be used to evade
plugin-types
directives. [CSP]
Then, the user agent must act as if it had stopped parsing.
Upon creation of the Document
object, the user agent must run the application cache selection algorithm with no manifest, and
passing in the newly-created Document
.
After creating the Document
object, but potentially before the page has finished
fully loading, the user agent must update the session history with the new page.
User agents may add content to the head
element of the Document
, or
attributes to the embed
element, e.g. to link to a style sheet or an XBL binding, or
to give the document a title
.
When the user agent is to display a user agent page inline in a browsing context,
the user agent should create a Document
object, mark it as being an
HTML document, set its content type to "text/html
",
and then either associate that Document
with a custom rendering that is not rendered
using the normal Document
rendering rules, or mutate that Document
until
it represents the content the user agent wants to render.
Once the page has been set up, the user agent must act as if it had stopped parsing.
Upon creation of the Document
object, the user agent must run the application cache selection algorithm with no manifest,
passing in the newly-created Document
.
After creating the Document
object, but potentially before the page has been
completely set up, the user agent must update the session history with the new
page.
When a user agent is supposed to navigate to a fragment identifier, then the user agent must run the following steps:
Remove all the entries in the browsing context's session history after the current entry. If the current entry is the last entry in the session history, then no entries are removed.
This doesn't necessarily have to affect the user agent's user interface.
Remove any tasks queued by the history traversal
task source that are associated with any Document
objects in the
top-level browsing context's document family.
Append a new entry at the end of the History
object representing the new
resource and its Document
object and related state. Its URL must be set
to the address to which the user agent was navigating. The title
must be left unset.
Traverse the history to the new entry, with the asynchronous events flag set. This will scroll to the fragment identifier given in what is now the document's address.
If the scrolling fails because the relevant ID has not yet been parsed, then the original navigation algorithm will take care of the scrolling instead, as the last few steps of its update the session history with the new page algorithm.
When the user agent is required to scroll to the fragment identifier and the indicated part of the document, if any, is being rendered, the user agent must either change the scrolling position of the document using the following algorithm, or perform some other action such that the indicated part of the document is brought to the user's attention. If there is no indicated part, or if the indicated part is not being rendered, then the user agent must do nothing. The aforementioned algorithm is as follows:
Let target be the indicated part of the document, as defined below.
If target is the top of the document, then scroll to the
beginning of the document for the Document
, and abort these steps. [CSSOMVIEW]
Use the scroll an element into view algorithm to scroll target into view, with the align to top flag set. [CSSOMVIEW]
If target is a focusable element, run the focusing steps for that element.
The indicated part of the document is the one that the fragment identifier, if any,
identifies. The semantics of the fragment identifier in terms of mapping it to a specific DOM Node
is defined by the specification that defines the MIME type used by the
Document
(for example, the processing of fragment identifiers for XML MIME types is the responsibility of RFC7303).
[RFC7303]
For HTML documents (and HTML MIME types), the following processing model must be followed to determine what the indicated part of the document is.
Apply the URL parser algorithm to the URL, and let fragid be the fragment component of the resulting parsed URL.
If fragid is the empty string, then the indicated part of the document is the top of the document; stop the algorithm here.
Let fragid bytes be the result of percent-decoding fragid.
Let decoded fragid be the result of applying the UTF-8 decoder algorithm to fragid bytes. If the UTF-8 decoder emits a decoder error, abort the decoder and instead jump to the step labeled no decoded fragid.
If there is an element in the DOM that has an ID exactly equal to decoded fragid, then the first such element in tree order is the indicated part of the document; stop the algorithm here.
No decoded fragid: If there is an a
element in the DOM that has a name
attribute whose value is exactly equal to fragid (not decoded fragid), then the first such
element in tree order is the indicated part of the document; stop the algorithm
here.
If fragid is an ASCII case-insensitive match for the
string top
, then the indicated part of the document is the top
of the document; stop the algorithm here.
Otherwise, there is no indicated part of the document.
For the purposes of the interaction of HTML with Selectors' :target
pseudo-class, the target element is
the indicated part of the document, if that is an element; otherwise there is no
target element. [SELECTORS]
The task source for the task mentioned in this section must be the DOM manipulation task source.
When a user agent is required to traverse the history to a specified entry, optionally with replacement enabled, and optionally with the asynchronous events flag set, the user agent must act as follows.
This algorithm is not just invoked when explicitly going back or forwards in the session history — it is also invoked in other situations, for example when navigating a browsing context, as part of updating the session history with the new page.
If there is no longer a Document
object for the entry in question,
navigate the browsing
context to the resource for that entry to perform an entry update of that
entry, and abort these steps. The "navigate" algorithm reinvokes this "traverse"
algorithm to complete the traversal, at which point there is a Document
object and so this step gets skipped. The navigation must be done using the same source
browsing context as was used the first time this entry was created. (This can never
happen with replacement enabled.)
If the resource was obtained usign a non-idempotent action, for example a POST form submission, or if the resource is no longer available, for example because the computer is now offline and the page wasn't cached, navigating to it again might not be possible. In this case, the navigation will result in a different page than previously; for example, it might be an error message explaining the problem or offering to resubmit the form.
If the current entry's title was not set by the pushState()
or replaceState()
methods, then set its title to the value
returned by the document.title
IDL attribute.
If appropriate, update the current entry in the browsing
context's Document
object's History
object to reflect any state
that the user agent wishes to persist. The entry is then said to be an entry with persisted
user state.
If the specified entry has a different Document
object
than the current entry, then run the following substeps:
Remove any tasks queued by the history traversal
task source that are associated with any Document
objects in the
top-level browsing context's document family.
If the origin of the Document
of the specified
entry is not the same as the origin of the
Document
of the current entry, then run the following
sub-sub-steps:
The current browsing context name must be stored with all the entries in
the history that are associated with Document
objects with the same
origin as the active document and that are contiguous with the
current entry.
If the browsing context is a top-level browsing context, but not an auxiliary browsing context, then the browsing context's browsing context name must be unset.
Make the specified entry's
Document
object the active document of the browsing
context.
If the specified entry has a browsing context name stored with it, then run the following sub-sub-steps:
Set the browsing context's browsing context name to the name stored with the specified entry.
Clear any browsing context names stored
with all entries in the history that are associated with Document
objects with
the same origin as the new active document and that are contiguous
with the specified entry.
If the specified entry's
Document
has any form controls whose autofill field name is "off
", invoke the reset algorithm of each of those elements.
If the current document readiness of the specified entry's
Document
is "complete
", queue a task to run
the following sub-sub-steps:
If the Document
's page showing flag is true, then abort this
task (i.e. don't fire the event below).
Set the Document
's page showing flag to true.
Run any session history document visibility change steps for Document
that
are defined by other applicable specifications.
This is specifically intended for use by the Page Visibility specification. [PAGEVIS]
Fire a trusted event with the name pageshow
at the Window
object of that
Document
, but with its target
set to the
Document
object (and the currentTarget
set to the Window
object),
using the PageTransitionEvent
interface, with the persisted
attribute initialized to true.
This event must not bubble, must not be cancelable, and has no default action.
Set the document's address to the URL of the specified entry.
If the specified entry has a URL whose fragment identifier differs
from that of the current entry's when compared in a case-sensitive
manner, and the two share the same Document
object, then let hash
changed be true, and let old URL be the URL of the current
entry and new URL be the URL of the specified
entry. Otherwise, let hash changed be false.
If the traversal was initiated with replacement enabled, remove the entry immediately before the specified entry in the session history.
If the specified entry is not an entry with persisted user state, but its URL has a fragment identifier, scroll to the fragment identifier.
If the entry is an entry with persisted user state, the user agent may update aspects of the document and its rendering, for instance the scroll position or values of form fields, that it had previously recorded.
This can even include updating the dir
attribute
of textarea
elements or input
elements whose type
attribute is in either the Text state or the Search state, if the persisted state includes the
directionality of user input in such controls.
If the entry is a state object entry, let state be a structured clone of that state object. Otherwise, let state be null.
Set history.state
to state.
Let state changed be true if the Document
of the specified entry has a latest entry, and that entry is not the specified entry; otherwise let it be false.
Let the latest entry of the Document
of the specified entry be the specified entry.
If the asynchronous events flag is not set, then run the following steps synchronously. Otherwise, the asynchronous events flag is set; queue a task to run the following substeps.
If state changed is true, fire a trusted
event with the name popstate
at the Window
object of the Document
, using the PopStateEvent
interface, with the
state
attribute initialized to the value of state. This event must bubble but not be cancelable and has no default
action.
If hash changed is true, then fire a trusted
event with the name hashchange
at the browsing
context's Window
object, using the HashChangeEvent
interface,
with the oldURL
attribute initialized to old URL and the newURL
attribute
initialized to new URL. This event must bubble but not be cancelable and
has no default action.
The current entry is now the specified entry.
The task source for the tasks mentioned above is the DOM manipulation task source.
The popstate
event is fired in certain cases
when navigating to a session history entry.
[Constructor(DOMString type, optional PopStateEventInit eventInitDict)] interface PopStateEvent : Event { readonly attribute any state; }; dictionary PopStateEventInit : EventInit { any state; };
state
Returns a copy of the information that was provided to pushState()
or replaceState()
.
The state
attribute must return the
value it was initialized to. When the object is created, this attribute must be initialized to
null. It represents the context information for the event, or null, if the state represented is
the initial state of the Document
.
The hashchange
event is fired when navigating
to a session history entry whose URL differs from that of the previous
one only in the fragment identifier.
[Constructor(DOMString type, optional HashChangeEventInit eventInitDict)] interface HashChangeEvent : Event { readonly attribute DOMString oldURL; readonly attribute DOMString newURL; }; dictionary HashChangeEventInit : EventInit { DOMString oldURL; DOMString newURL; };
oldURL
Returns the URL of the session history entry that was previously current.
newURL
Returns the URL of the session history entry that is now current.
The oldURL
attribute must return the
value it was initialized to. When the object is created, this attribute must be initialized to
null. It represents context information for the event, specifically the URL of the session
history entry that was traversed from.
The newURL
attribute must return the
value it was initialized to. When the object is created, this attribute must be initialized to
null. It represents context information for the event, specifically the URL of the session
history entry that was traversed to.
The pageshow
event is fired when traversing to a session history entry.
The pagehide
event is fired when traversing
from a session history entry. The specification uses the page
showing flag to ensure that scripts receive these events in a consistent manner (e.g. that
they never receive two pagehide
events in a row without an
intervening pageshow
, or vice versa).
[Constructor(DOMString type, optional PageTransitionEventInit eventInitDict)] interface PageTransitionEvent : Event { readonly attribute boolean persisted; }; dictionary PageTransitionEventInit : EventInit { boolean persisted; };
persisted
For the pageshow
event, returns false if the page is
newly being loaded (and the load
event will fire). Otherwise,
returns true.
For the pagehide
event, returns false if the page is
going away for the last time. Otherwise, returns true, meaning that (if nothing conspires to
make the page unsalvageable) the page might be reused if the user navigates back to this
page.
Things that can cause the page to be unsalvageable include:
document.open()
beforeunload
events
unload
events
iframe
s that are not salvageable
WebSocket
objects
Document
The persisted
attribute must
return the value it was initialized to. When the object is created, this attribute must be
initialized to false. It represents the context information for the event.
A Document
has a salvageable state, which must initially be true,
a fired unload flag, which must initially be false, and a page showing flag,
which must initially be false.
Event loops have a termination nesting level counter, which must initially be zero.
When a user agent is to prompt to unload a document, it must run the following steps.
Increase the event loop's termination nesting level by one.
Increase the Document
's ignore-opens-during-unload counter by
one.
Let event be a new trusted
BeforeUnloadEvent
event object with the name beforeunload
, which does not bubble but is cancelable.
Decrease the event loop's termination nesting level by one.
Release the storage mutex.
If any event listeners were triggered by the earlier dispatch step, then set the
Document
's salvageable state to
false.
If the returnValue
attribute of the
event object is not the empty string, or if the event was canceled, then the
user agent should ask the user to confirm that they wish to unload the document.
The prompt shown by the user agent may include the string of the returnValue
attribute, or some leading subset
thereof. (A user agent may want to truncate the string to 1024 characters for display, for
instance.)
The user agent must pause while waiting for the user's response.
If the user did not confirm the page navigation, then the user agent refused to allow the document to be unloaded.
If this algorithm was invoked by another instance of the "prompt to unload a document" algorithm (i.e. through the steps below that invoke this algorithm for all descendant browsing contexts), then jump to the step labeled end.
Let descendants be the list of the descendant browsing
contexts of the Document
.
If descendants is not an empty list, then for each browsing context b in descendants run the following substeps:
Prompt to unload the active document of the browsing context b. If the user refused to allow the document to be unloaded, then the user implicitly also refused to allow this document to be unloaded; jump to the step labeled end.
If the salvageable state of the active document of the browsing context b is false, then set the salvageable state of this document to false also.
End: Decrease the Document
's ignore-opens-during-unload
counter by one.
When a user agent is to unload a document, it must run the following steps. These
steps are passed an argument, recycle, which is either true or false,
indicating whether the Document
object is going to be re-used. (This is set by the
document.open()
method.)
Increase the event loop's termination nesting level by one.
Increase the Document
's ignore-opens-during-unload counter by
one.
If the Document
's page showing flag is false, then jump to the
step labeled unload event below (i.e. skip firing the pagehide
event and don't rerun the unloading document
visibility change steps).
Set the Document
's page showing flag to false.
Fire a trusted event with the name pagehide
at the Window
object of the
Document
, but with its target
set to the
Document
object (and the currentTarget
set to the Window
object), using the PageTransitionEvent
interface,
with the persisted
attribute initialized
to true if the Document
object's salvageable state is true, and false otherwise. This
event must not bubble, must not be cancelable, and has no default action.
Run any unloading document visibility change steps for Document
that
are defined by other applicable specifications.
This is specifically intended for use by the Page Visibility specification. [PAGEVIS]
Unload event: If the Document
's fired unload flag is
false, fire a simple event named unload
at the
Document
's Window
object.
Decrease the event loop's termination nesting level by one.
Release the storage mutex.
If any event listeners were triggered by the earlier unload event step, then set
the Document
object's salvageable state
to false and set the Document
's fired unload flag to true.
Run any unloading document cleanup steps for Document
that are
defined by this specification and other applicable specifications.
If this algorithm was invoked by another instance of the "unload a document" algorithm (i.e. by the steps below that invoke this algorithm for all descendant browsing contexts), then jump to the step labeled end.
Let descendants be the list of the descendant browsing
contexts of the Document
.
If descendants is not an empty list, then for each browsing context b in descendants run the following substeps:
Unload the active document of the browsing context b with the recycle parameter set to false.
If the salvageable state of the active document of the browsing context b is false, then set the salvageable state of this document to false also.
If both the Document
's salvageable state and recycle are
false, then the Document
's browsing context must discard the Document
.
End: Decrease the Document
's ignore-opens-during-unload
counter by one.
This specification defines the following unloading document cleanup steps. Other specifications can define more.
Make disappear any WebSocket
objects that were created by the WebSocket()
constructor from the
Document
's Window
object.
If this affected any WebSocket
objects, then set Document
's salvageable state to false.
If the Document
's salvageable
state is false, forcibly close any
EventSource
objects that whose constructor was invoked from the
Document
's Window
object.
If the Document
's salvageable
state is false, empty the Document
's Window
's list of active
timers.
interface BeforeUnloadEvent : Event { attribute DOMString returnValue; };
returnValue
[ = value ]Returns the current return value of the event (the message to show the user).
Can be set, to update the message.
There are no BeforeUnloadEvent
-specific initialization methods.
The returnValue
attribute
represents the message to show the user. When the event is created, the attribute must be set to
the empty string. On getting, it must return the last value it was set to. On setting, the
attribute must be set to the new value.
If a Document
is aborted, the user agent must
run the following steps:
Abort the active
documents of every child browsing context. If this results in any of those
Document
objects having their salvageable state set to false, then set this
Document
's salvageable state to false
also.
Cancel any instances of the fetch algorithm in the context of
this Document
, discarding any tasks queued for them, and discarding any further data received from the
network for them. If this resulted in any instances of the fetch
algorithm being canceled or any queued tasks or any network data getting discarded, then set the
Document
's salvageable state to
false.
If the Document
has an active parser, then abort that parser and set the Document
's salvageable state to false.
User agents may allow users to explicitly invoke the abort a
document algorithm for a Document
. If the user does so, then, if that
Document
is an active document, the user agent should queue a
task to fire a simple event named abort
at
that Document
's Window
object before invoking the abort algorithm.
This section is non-normative.
In order to enable users to continue interacting with Web applications and documents even when their network connection is unavailable — for instance, because they are traveling outside of their ISP's coverage area — authors can provide a manifest which lists the files that are needed for the Web application to work offline and which causes the user's browser to keep a copy of the files for use offline.
To illustrate this, consider a simple clock applet consisting of an HTML page "clock.html
", a CSS style sheet "clock.css
", and a JavaScript
script "clock.js
".
Before adding the manifest, these three files might look like this:
EXAMPLE offline/clock/clock1.html
EXAMPLE offline/clock/clock1.css
EXAMPLE offline/clock/clock1.js
If the user tries to open the "clock.html
" page while offline, though,
the user agent (unless it happens to have it still in the local cache) will fail with an
error.
The author can instead provide a manifest of the three files, say "clock.appcache
":
EXAMPLE offline/clock/clock2.appcache
With a small change to the HTML file, the manifest (served as text/cache-manifest
)
is linked to the application:
EXAMPLE offline/clock/clock2.html
Now, if the user goes to the page, the browser will cache the files and make them available even when the user is offline.
Authors are encouraged to include the main page in the manifest also, but in practice the page that referenced the manifest is automatically cached even if it isn't explicitly mentioned.
With the exception of "no-store" directive, HTTP cache headers and restrictions on
caching pages served over TLS (encrypted, using https:
) are overridden by
manifests. Thus, pages will not expire from an application cache before the user agent has updated
it, and even applications served over TLS can be made to work offline.
This section is non-normative.
The application cache feature works best if the application logic is separate from the
application and user data, with the logic (markup, scripts, style sheets, images, etc) listed in
the manifest and stored in the application cache, with a finite number of static HTML pages for
the application, and with the application and user data stored in Web Storage or a client-side
Indexed Database, updated dynamically using Web Sockets, XMLHttpRequest
, server-sent
events, or some other similar mechanism.
This model results in a fast experience for the user: the application immediately loads, and fresh data is obtained as fast as the network will allow it (possibly while stale data shows).
Legacy applications, however, tend to be designed so that the user data and the logic are mixed together in the HTML, with each operation resulting in a new HTML page from the server.
For example, consider a news application. The typical architecture of such an application, when not using the application cache feature, is that the user fetches the main page, and the server returns a dynamically-generated page with the current headlines and the user interface logic mixed together.
A news application designed for the application cache feature, however, would instead have the
main page just consist of the logic, and would then have the main page fetch the data separately
from the server, e.g. using XMLHttpRequest
.
The mixed-content model does not work well with the application cache feature: since the content is cached, it would result in the user always seeing the stale data from the previous time the cache was updated.
While there is no way to make the legacy model work as fast as the separated model, it
can at least be retrofitted for offline use using the prefer-online application cache mode. To do so, list all the static
resources used by the HTML page you want to have work offline in an application cache manifest, use the manifest
attribute to select that manifest from the HTML file,
and then add the following line at the bottom of the manifest:
SETTINGS: prefer-online NETWORK: *
This causes the application cache to only be used for master entries when the user is offline, and causes the application cache to be used as an atomic HTTP cache (essentially pinning resources listed in the manifest), while allowing all resources not listed in the manifest to be accessed normally when the user is online.
This section is non-normative.
When the user visits a page that declares a manifest, the browser will try to update the cache. It does this by fetching a copy of the manifest and, if the manifest has changed since the user agent last saw it, redownloading all the resources it mentions and caching them anew.
As this is going on, a number of events get fired on the ApplicationCache
object
to keep the script updated as to the state of the cache update, so that the user can be notified
appropriately. The events are as follows:
Event name | Interface | Fired when... | Next events |
---|---|---|---|
checking
| Event
| The user agent is checking for an update, or attempting to download the manifest for the first time. This is always the first event in the sequence. | noupdate , downloading , obsolete , error
|
noupdate
| Event
| The manifest hadn't changed. | Last event in sequence. |
downloading
| Event
| The user agent has found an update and is fetching it, or is downloading the resources listed by the manifest for the first time. | progress , error , cached , updateready
|
progress
| ProgressEvent
| The user agent is downloading resources listed by the manifest.
The event object's total attribute returns the total number of files to be downloaded.
The event object's loaded attribute returns the number of files processed so far.
| progress , error , cached , updateready
|
cached
| Event
| The resources listed in the manifest have been downloaded, and the application is now cached. | Last event in sequence. |
updateready
| Event
| The resources listed in the manifest have been newly redownloaded, and the script can use
swapCache() to switch to the new cache.
| Last event in sequence. |
obsolete
| Event
| The manifest was found to have become a 404 or 410 page, so the application cache is being deleted. | Last event in sequence. |
error
| Event
| The manifest was a 404 or 410 page, so the attempt to cache the application has been aborted. | Last event in sequence. |
The manifest hadn't changed, but the page referencing the manifest failed to download properly. | |||
A fatal error occurred while fetching the resources listed in the manifest. | |||
The manifest changed while the update was being run. | The user agent will try fetching the files again momentarily. |
These events are cancelable; their default action is for the user agent to show download progress information. If the page shows its own update UI, canceling the events will prevent the user agent from showing redundant progress information.
An application cache is a set of cached resources consisting of:
One or more resources (including their out-of-band metadata, such as HTTP headers, if any), identified by URLs, each falling into one (or more) of the following categories:
These are documents that were added to the cache because a browsing
context was navigated to that document and the document
indicated that this was its cache, using the manifest
attribute.
This is the resource corresponding to the URL that was given in a master
entry's html
element's manifest
attribute.
The manifest is fetched and processed during the application cache download
process. All the master entries have the
same origin as the manifest.
These are the resources that were listed in the cache's manifest in an explicit section.
These are the resources that were listed in the cache's manifest in a fallback section.
Explicit entries and Fallback entries can be marked as foreign, which means that they have a manifest
attribute but that it doesn't point at this cache's
manifest.
A URL in the list can be flagged with multiple different types, and thus an entry can end up being categorized as multiple entries. For example, an entry can be a manifest entry and an explicit entry at the same time, if the manifest is listed within the manifest.
Zero or more fallback namespaces, each of which is mapped to a fallback entry.
These are URLs used as prefix match patterns for resources that are to be fetched from the network if possible, or to be replaced by the corresponding fallback entry if not. Each namespace URL has the same origin as the manifest.
Zero or more URLs that form the online whitelist namespaces.
These are used as prefix match patterns, and declare URLs for which the user agent will ignore the application cache, instead fetching them normally (i.e. from the network or local HTTP cache as appropriate).
An online whitelist wildcard flag, which is either open or blocking.
The open state indicates that any URL not listed as cached is to be implicitly treated as being in the online whitelist namespaces; the blocking state indicates that URLs not listed explicitly in the manifest are to be treated as unavailable.
A cache mode flag, which is either in the fast state or the prefer-online state.
Each application cache has a completeness flag, which is either complete or incomplete.
An application cache group is a group of application caches, identified by the absolute URL of a resource manifest which is used to populate the caches in the group.
An application cache is newer than another if it was created after the other (in other words, application caches in an application cache group have a chronological order).
Only the newest application cache in an application cache group can have its completeness flag set to incomplete; the others are always all complete.
Each application cache group has an update status, which is one of the following: idle, checking, downloading.
A relevant application cache is an application cache that is the newest in its group to be complete.
Each application cache group has a list of pending master entries. Each entry in this
list consists of a resource and a corresponding Document
object. It is used during
the application cache download process to ensure that new master entries are cached
even if the application cache download process was already running for their
application cache group when they were loaded.
An application cache group can be marked as obsolete, meaning that it must be ignored when looking at what application cache groups exist.
A cache host is a Document
or a SharedWorkerGlobalScope
object. A cache host can be associated with an application cache.
[WEBWORKERS]
A Document
initially is not associated with an application cache, but
can become associated with one early during the page load process, when steps in the parser and in the navigation
sections cause cache selection to occur.
A SharedWorkerGlobalScope
can be associated with an application cache
when it is created.
[WEBWORKERS]
Each cache host has an associated ApplicationCache
object.
Multiple application caches in different application cache groups can contain the same resource, e.g. if the manifests all reference that resource. If the user agent is to select an application cache from a list of relevant application caches that contain a resource, the user agent must use the application cache that the user most likely wants to see the resource from, taking into account the following:
A URL matches a fallback namespace if there exists a relevant application cache whose manifest's URL has the same origin as the URL in question, and that has a fallback namespace that is a prefix match for the URL being examined. If multiple fallback namespaces match the same URL, the longest one is the one that matches. A URL looking for a fallback namespace can match more than one application cache at a time, but only matches one namespace in each cache.
If a manifest http://example.com/app1/manifest
declares that http://example.com/resources/images
is a fallback namespace, and the user
navigates to HTTP://EXAMPLE.COM:80/resources/images/cat.png
, then the user
agent will decide that the application cache identified by http://example.com/app1/manifest
contains a namespace with a match for that
URL.
This section is non-normative.
This example manifest requires two images and a style sheet to be cached and whitelists a CGI script.
CACHE MANIFEST # the above line is required # this is a comment # there can be as many of these anywhere in the file # they are all ignored # comments can have spaces before them # but must be alone on the line # blank lines are ignored too # these are files that need to be cached they can either be listed # first, or a "CACHE:" header could be put before them, as is done # lower down. images/sound-icon.png images/background.png # note that each file has to be put on its own line # here is a file for the online whitelist -- it isn't cached, and # references to this file will bypass the cache, always hitting the # network (or trying to, if the user is offline). NETWORK: comm.cgi # here is another set of files to cache, this time just the CSS file. CACHE: style/default.css
It could equally well be written as follows:
CACHE MANIFEST NETWORK: comm.cgi CACHE: style/default.css images/sound-icon.png images/background.png
Offline application cache manifests can use absolute paths or even absolute URLs:
CACHE MANIFEST /main/home /main/app.js /settings/home /settings/app.js http://img.example.com/logo.png http://img.example.com/check.png http://img.example.com/cross.png
The following manifest defines a catch-all error page that is displayed for any page on the site while the user is offline. It also specifies that the online whitelist wildcard flag is open, meaning that accesses to resources on other sites will not be blocked. (Resources on the same site are already not blocked because of the catch-all fallback namespace.)
So long as all pages on the site reference this manifest, they will get cached locally as they are fetched, so that subsequent hits to the same page will load the page immediately from the cache. Until the manifest is changed, those pages will not be fetched from the server again. When the manifest changes, then all the files will be redownloaded.
Subresources, such as style sheets, images, etc, would only be cached using the regular HTTP caching semantics, however.
CACHE MANIFEST FALLBACK: / /offline.html NETWORK: *
Manifests must be served using the text/cache-manifest
MIME type. All
resources served using the text/cache-manifest
MIME type must follow the
syntax of application cache manifests, as described in this section.
An application cache manifest is a text file, whose text is encoded using UTF-8. Data in application cache manifests is line-based. Newlines must be represented by "LF" (U+000A) characters, "CR" (U+000D) characters, or "CR" (U+000D) "LF" (U+000A) pairs. [RFC3629]
This is a willful violation of RFC 2046, which requires all text/*
types to only allow CRLF line breaks. This requirement, however, is
outdated; the use of CR, LF, and CRLF line breaks is commonly supported and indeed sometimes CRLF
is not supported by text editors. [RFC2046]
The first line of an application cache manifest must consist of the string "CACHE", a single U+0020 SPACE character, the string "MANIFEST", and either a U+0020 SPACE character, a "tab" (U+0009) character, a "LF" (U+000A) character, or a "CR" (U+000D) character. The first line may optionally be preceded by a "BOM" (U+FEFF) character. If any other text is found on the first line, it is ignored.
Subsequent lines, if any, must all be one of the following:
Blank lines must consist of zero or more U+0020 SPACE and "tab" (U+0009) characters only.
Comment lines must consist of zero or more U+0020 SPACE and "tab" (U+0009) characters, followed by a single "#" (U+0023) character, followed by zero or more characters other than "LF" (U+000A) and "CR" (U+000D) characters.
Comments must be on a line on their own. If they were to be included on a line with a URL, the "#" would be mistaken for part of a fragment identifier.
Section headers change the current section. There are four possible section headers:
CACHE:
FALLBACK:
NETWORK:
SETTINGS:
Section header lines must consist of zero or more U+0020 SPACE and "tab" (U+0009) characters, followed by one of the names above (including the ":)" (U+003A) character followed by zero or more U+0020 SPACE and "tab" (U+0009) characters.
Ironically, by default, the current section is the explicit section.
The format that data lines must take depends on the current section.
When the current section is the explicit section, data lines must consist of zero or more U+0020 SPACE and "tab" (U+0009) characters, a valid URL identifying a resource other than the manifest itself, and then zero or more U+0020 SPACE and "tab" (U+0009) characters.
When the current section is the fallback section, data lines must consist of zero or more U+0020 SPACE and "tab" (U+0009) characters, a valid URL identifying a resource other than the manifest itself, one or more U+0020 SPACE and "tab" (U+0009) characters, another valid URL identifying a resource other than the manifest itself, and then zero or more U+0020 SPACE and "tab" (U+0009) characters.
When the current section is the online whitelist section, data lines must consist of zero or more U+0020 SPACE and "tab" (U+0009) characters, either a single "*" (U+002A) character or a valid URL identifying a resource other than the manifest itself, and then zero or more U+0020 SPACE and "tab" (U+0009) characters.
When the current section is the settings section, data lines must consist of zero or more U+0020 SPACE and "tab" (U+0009) characters, a setting, and then zero or more U+0020 SPACE and "tab" (U+0009) characters.
Currently only one setting is defined:
prefer-online
". It sets the cache mode to prefer-online. (The cache mode defaults to fast.)Within a settings section, each setting must occur no more than once.
Manifests may contain sections more than once. Sections may be empty.
URLs that are to be fallback pages associated with fallback namespaces, and those namespaces themselves, must be given in fallback sections, with the namespace being the first URL of the data line, and the corresponding fallback page being the second URL. All the other pages to be cached must be listed in explicit sections.
Fallback namespaces and fallback entries must have the same origin as the manifest itself.
A fallback namespace must not be listed more than once.
Namespaces that the user agent is to put into the online whitelist must all be specified in online whitelist sections. (This is needed for any URL that the page is intending to use to communicate back to the server.) To specify that all URLs are automatically whitelisted in this way, a "*" (U+002A) character may be specified as one of the URLs.
Authors should not include namespaces in the online whitelist for which another namespace in the online whitelist is a prefix match.
Relative URLs must be given relative to the manifest's own URL. All URLs in the manifest must have the same scheme as the manifest itself (either explicitly or implicitly, through the use of relative URLs). [URL]
URLs in manifests must not have fragment identifiers (i.e. the U+0023 NUMBER SIGN character isn't allowed in URLs in manifests).
Fallback namespaces and namespaces in the online whitelist are matched by prefix match.
When a user agent is to parse a manifest, it means that the user agent must run the following steps:
UTF-8 decode the byte stream corresponding with the manifest to be parsed.
The UTF-8 decode algorithm strips a leading BOM, if any.
Let base URL be the absolute URL representing the manifest.
Apply the URL parser steps to the base URL, so that the components from its parsed URL can be used by the subseqent steps of this algorithm.
Let explicit URLs be an initially empty list of absolute URLs for explicit entries.
Let fallback URLs be an initially empty mapping of fallback namespaces to absolute URLs for fallback entries.
Let online whitelist namespaces be an initially empty list of absolute URLs for an online whitelist.
Let online whitelist wildcard flag be blocking.
Let cache mode flag be fast.
Let input be the decoded text of the manifest's byte stream.
Let position be a pointer into input, initially pointing at the first character.
If the characters starting from position are "CACHE", followed by a U+0020 SPACE character, followed by "MANIFEST", then advance position to the next character after those. Otherwise, this isn't a cache manifest; abort this algorithm with a failure while checking for the magic signature.
If the character at position is neither a U+0020 SPACE character, a "tab" (U+0009) character, "LF" (U+000A) character, nor a "CR" (U+000D) character, then this isn't a cache manifest; abort this algorithm with a failure while checking for the magic signature.
This is a cache manifest. The algorithm cannot fail beyond this point (though bogus lines can get ignored).
Collect a sequence of characters that are not "LF" (U+000A) or "CR" (U+000D) characters, and ignore those characters. (Extra text on the first line, after the signature, is ignored.)
Let mode be "explicit".
Start of line: If position is past the end of input, then jump to the last step. Otherwise, collect a sequence of characters that are "LF" (U+000A), "CR" (U+000D), U+0020 SPACE, or "tab" (U+0009) characters.
Now, collect a sequence of characters that are not "LF" (U+000A) or "CR" (U+000D) characters, and let the result be line.
Drop any trailing U+0020 SPACE and "tab" (U+0009) characters at the end of line.
If line is the empty string, then jump back to the step labeled start of line.
If the first character in line is a "#" (U+0023) character, then jump back to the step labeled start of line.
If line equals "CACHE:" (the word "CACHE" followed by a ":)" (U+003A) character, then set mode to "explicit" and jump back to the step labeled start of line.
If line equals "FALLBACK:" (the word "FALLBACK" followed by a ":)" (U+003A) character, then set mode to "fallback" and jump back to the step labeled start of line.
If line equals "NETWORK:" (the word "NETWORK" followed by a ":)" (U+003A) character, then set mode to "online whitelist" and jump back to the step labeled start of line.
If line equals "SETTINGS:" (the word "SETTINGS" followed by a ":)" (U+003A) character, then set mode to "settings" and jump back to the step labeled start of line.
If line ends with a ":" (U+003A) character, then set mode to "unknown" and jump back to the step labeled start of line.
This is either a data line or it is syntactically incorrect.
Let position be a pointer into line, initially pointing at the start of the string.
Let tokens be a list of strings, initially empty.
While position doesn't point past the end of line:
Let current token be an empty string.
While position doesn't point past the end of line and the character at position is neither a U+0020 SPACE nor a "tab" (U+0009) character, add the character at position to current token and advance position to the next character in input.
Add current token to the tokens list.
While position doesn't point past the end of line and the character at position is either a U+0020 SPACE or a "tab" (U+0009) character, advance position to the next character in input.
Process tokens as follows:
Resolve the first item in tokens, relative to base URL, with the URL character encoding set to UTF-8; ignore the rest.
If this fails, then jump back to the step labeled start of line.
If the resulting parsed URL has a different scheme component than base URL (the manifest's URL), then jump back to the step labeled start of line.
Let new URL be the result of applying the URL serializer algorithm to the resulting parsed URL, with the exclude fragment flag set.
Add new URL to the explicit URLs.
Let part one be the first token in tokens, and let part two be the second token in tokens.
Resolve part one and part two, relative to base URL, with the URL character encoding set to UTF-8.
If either fails, then jump back to the step labeled start of line.
If the absolute URL corresponding to either part one or part two does not have the same origin as the manifest's URL, then jump back to the step labeled start of line.
Let part one be the result of applying the URL serializer algorithm to the first resulting parsed URL, with the exclude fragment flag set.
Let part two be the result of applying the URL serializer algorithm to the second resulting parsed URL, with the exclude fragment flag set.
If part one is already in the fallback URLs mapping as a fallback namespace, then jump back to the step labeled start of line.
Otherwise, add part one to the fallback URLs mapping as a fallback namespace, mapped to part two as the fallback entry.
If the first item in tokens is a "*" (U+002A) character, then set online whitelist wildcard flag to open and jump back to the step labeled start of line.
Otherwise, resolve the first item in tokens, relative to base URL, with the URL character encoding set to UTF-8; ignore the rest.
If this fails, then jump back to the step labeled start of line.
If the resulting parsed URL has a different scheme component than base URL (the manifest's URL), then jump back to the step labeled start of line.
Let new URL be the result of applying the URL serializer algorithm to the resulting parsed URL, with the exclude fragment flag set.
Add new URL to the online whitelist namespaces.
If tokens contains a single token, and that token is a
case-sensitive match for the string "prefer-online
", then
set cache mode flag to prefer-online and jump back to the
step labeled start of line.
Otherwise, the line is an unsupported setting: do nothing; the line is ignored.
Do nothing. The line is ignored.
Jump back to the step labeled start of line. (That step jumps to the next, and last, step when the end of the file is reached.)
Return the explicit URLs list, the fallback URLs mapping, the online whitelist namespaces, the online whitelist wildcard flag, and the cache mode flag.
The resource that declares the manifest (with the manifest
attribute) will always get taken from the cache,
whether it is listed in the cache or not, even if it is listed in an online whitelist namespace.
If a resource is listed in the explicit section or as a fallback entry in the fallback section, the resource will always be taken from the cache, regardless of any other matching entries in the fallback namespaces or online whitelist namespaces.
When a fallback namespace and an online whitelist namespace overlap, the online whitelist namespace has priority.
The online whitelist wildcard flag is applied last, only for URLs that match neither the online whitelist namespace nor the fallback namespace and that are not listed in the explicit section.
When the user agent is required (by other parts of this specification) to start the application cache download process for an absolute URL purported to identify a manifest, or for an application cache group, potentially given a particular cache host, and potentially given a master resource, the user agent must run the steps below. These steps are always run asynchronously, in parallel with the event loop tasks.
Some of these steps have requirements that only apply if the user agent shows caching
progress. Support for this is optional. Caching progress UI could consist of a progress bar
or message panel in the user agent's interface, or an overlay, or something else. Certain events
fired during the application cache download process allow the script to override the
display of such an interface. (Such events are delayed until after the load
event has fired.)
The goal of this is to allow Web applications to provide more
seamless update mechanisms, hiding from the user the mechanics of the application cache mechanism.
User agents may display user interfaces independent of this, but are encouraged to not show
prominent update progress notifications for applications that cancel the relevant events.
The application cache download process steps are as follows:
Optionally, wait until the permission to start the application cache download process has been obtained from the user and until the user agent is confident that the network is available. This could include doing nothing until the user explicitly opts-in to caching the site, or could involve prompting the user for permission. The algorithm might never get past this point. (This step is particularly intended to be used by user agents running on severely space-constrained devices or in highly privacy-sensitive environments).
Atomically, so as to avoid race conditions, perform the following substeps:
Pick the appropriate substeps:
Let manifest URL be that absolute URL.
If there is no application cache group identified by manifest URL, then create a new application cache group identified by manifest URL. Initially, it has no application caches. One will be created later in this algorithm.
Let manifest URL be the absolute URL of the manifest used to identify the application cache group to be updated.
If that application cache group is obsolete, then abort this instance of the application cache download process. This can happen if another instance of this algorithm found the manifest to be 404 or 410 while this algorithm was waiting in the first step above.
Let cache group be the application cache group identified by manifest URL.
If these steps were invoked with a master
resource, then add the resource, along with the resource's Document
, to cache group's list of pending
master entries.
If these steps were invoked with a cache host, and the status of cache group is
checking or downloading, then queue a post-load task to fire a
simple event named checking
that is
cancelable at the ApplicationCache
singleton of that cache host. The
default action of this event must be, if the user agent shows caching progress,
the display of some sort of user interface indicating to the user that the user agent is
checking to see if it can download the application.
If these steps were invoked with a cache host, and the status of cache group is
downloading, then also queue a post-load task to fire a simple
event named downloading
that is
cancelable at the ApplicationCache
singleton of that cache host. The
default action of this event must be, if the user agent shows caching progress,
the display of some sort of user interface indicating to the user the application is being
downloaded.
If the status of the cache group is either checking or downloading, then abort this instance of the application cache download process, as an update is already in progress.
Set the status of cache group to checking.
For each cache host associated with an application cache in
cache group, queue a post-load task to fire a simple
event that is cancelable named checking
at
the ApplicationCache
singleton of the cache host. The default action
of these events must be, if the user agent shows caching progress, the display of
some sort of user interface indicating to the user that the user agent is checking for the
availability of updates.
The remainder of the steps run asynchronously.
If cache group already has an application cache in it, then this is an upgrade attempt. Otherwise, this is a cache attempt.
If this is a cache attempt, then this
algorithm was invoked with a cache host; queue a post-load task to
fire a simple event named checking
that
is cancelable at the ApplicationCache
singleton of that cache host. The
default action of this event must be, if the user agent shows caching progress, the
display of some sort of user interface indicating to the user that the user agent is checking for
the availability of updates.
Fetching the manifest: Fetch the resource from manifest URL with the synchronous flag set, and let manifest be that resource. HTTP caching semantics should be honored for this request.
Parse manifest according to the rules for parsing manifests, obtaining a list of explicit entries, fallback entries and the fallback namespaces that map to them, entries for the online whitelist, and values for the online whitelist wildcard flag and the cache mode flag.
The MIME type of the resource is ignored — it is assumed to
be text/cache-manifest
. In the future, if new manifest formats are supported, the
different types will probably be distinguished on the basis of the file signatures (for the
current format, that is the "CACHE MANIFEST
" string at the top of the
file).
If fetching the manifest fails due to a 404 or 410 response or equivalent, then run these substeps:
Mark cache group as obsolete. This cache group no
longer exists for any purpose other than the processing of Document
objects
already associated with an application cache in the cache
group.
Let task list be an empty list of tasks.
For each cache host associated with an application cache in
cache group, create a task to fire
a simple event named obsolete
that is
cancelable at the ApplicationCache
singleton of the cache host, and
append it to task list. The default action of these events must be, if the
user agent shows caching progress, the display of some sort of user interface
indicating to the user that the application is no longer available for offline use.
For each entry in cache group's list of pending master entries, create a task to fire a simple event that is cancelable named
error
(not obsolete
!) at the ApplicationCache
singleton of the Document
for this entry, if there still is one, and append it to
task list. The default action of this event must be, if the user agent
shows caching progress, the display of some sort of user interface indicating to
the user that the user agent failed to save the application for offline use.
If cache group has an application cache whose completeness flag is incomplete, then discard that application cache.
If appropriate, remove any user interface indicating that an update for this cache is in progress.
Let the status of cache group be idle.
For each task in task list, queue that task as a post-load task.
Abort the application cache download process.
Otherwise, if fetching the manifest fails in some other way (e.g. the server returns another 4xx or 5xx response or equivalent, or there is a DNS error, or the connection times out, or the user cancels the download, or the parser for manifests fails when checking the magic signature), or if the server returned a redirect, then run the cache failure steps. [HTTP]
If this is an upgrade attempt and the newly downloaded manifest is byte-for-byte identical to the manifest found in the newest application cache in cache group, or the server reported it as "304 Not Modified" or equivalent, then run these substeps:
Let cache be the newest application cache in cache group.
Let task list be an empty list of tasks.
For each entry in cache group's list of pending master entries, wait for the resource for this entry to have either completely downloaded or failed.
If the download failed (e.g. the server returns a 4xx or 5xx response or equivalent, or there is a DNS error, the
connection times out, or the user cancels the download), or if the resource is labeled with
the "no-store" cache directive, then create a task to
fire a simple event that is cancelable named error
at the ApplicationCache
singleton of
the Document
for this entry, if there still is one, and append it to task list. The default action of this event must be, if the user agent
shows caching progress, the display of some sort of user interface indicating to
the user that the user agent failed to save the application for offline use.
Otherwise, associate the Document
for this entry with cache; store the resource for this entry in cache, if it
isn't already there, and categorize its entry as a master entry. If applying the URL parser
algorithm to the resource's URL results in a parsed URL that has a
non-null fragment component, the URL
used for the entry in cache must instead be the absolute URL
obtained from applying the URL serializer
algorithm to the parsed URL with the exclude fragment flag set
(application caches never include fragment identifiers).
For each cache host associated with an application cache in
cache group, create a task to fire
a simple event that is cancelable named noupdate
at the ApplicationCache
singleton
of the cache host, and append it to task list. The default
action of these events must be, if the user agent shows caching progress, the
display of some sort of user interface indicating to the user that the application is up to
date.
Empty cache group's list of pending master entries.
If appropriate, remove any user interface indicating that an update for this cache is in progress.
Let the status of cache group be idle.
For each task in task list, queue that task as a post-load task.
Abort the application cache download process.
Let new cache be a newly created application cache in cache group. Set its completeness flag to incomplete.
For each entry in cache group's list of pending master entries, associate the
Document
for this entry with new cache.
Set the status of cache group to downloading.
For each cache host associated with an application cache in cache group, queue a post-load task to fire a simple
event that is cancelable named downloading
at the ApplicationCache
singleton of the cache host. The default action
of these events must be, if the user agent shows caching progress, the display of
some sort of user interface indicating to the user that a new version is being
downloaded.
Let file list be an empty list of URLs with flags.
Add all the URLs in the list of explicit entries obtained by parsing manifest to file list, each flagged with "explicit entry".
Add all the URLs in the list of fallback entries obtained by parsing manifest to file list, each flagged with "fallback entry".
If this is an upgrade attempt, then add all the URLs of master entries in the newest application cache in cache group whose completeness flag is complete to file list, each flagged with "master entry".
If any URL is in file list more than once, then merge the entries into one entry for that URL, that entry having all the flags that the original entries had.
For each URL in file list, run the following steps. These steps may be
run in parallel for two or more of the URLs at a time. If, while running these steps, the
ApplicationCache
object's abort()
method
sends a signal to this instance of the application
cache download process algorithm, then run the cache failure steps
instead.
If the resource URL being processed was flagged as neither an "explicit entry" nor or a "fallback entry", then the user agent may skip this URL.
This is intended to allow user agents to expire resources not listed in the manifest from the cache. Generally, implementors are urged to use an approach that expires lesser-used resources first.
For each cache host associated with an application cache in
cache group, queue a post-load task to fire a trusted
event with the name progress
, which does not
bubble, which is cancelable, and which uses the ProgressEvent
interface, at the
ApplicationCache
singleton of the cache host. The lengthComputable
attribute must be set to
true, the total
attribute must be set to the
number of files in file list, and the loaded
attribute must be set to the number of files in
file list that have been either downloaded or skipped so far. The default
action of these events must be, if the user agent shows caching progress, the
display of some sort of user interface indicating to the user that a file is being downloaded
in preparation for updating the application. [PROGRESS-EVENTS]
Fetch the resource, from the origin of the URL manifest URL, with the synchronous flag set and the manual redirect flag set. If this is an upgrade attempt, then use the newest application cache in cache group as an HTTP cache, and honor HTTP caching semantics (such as expiration, ETags, and so forth) with respect to that cache. User agents may also have other caches in place that are also honored.
If the resource in question is already being downloaded for other reasons then the existing download process can sometimes be used for the purposes of this step, as defined by the fetching algorithm.
An example of a resource that might already be being downloaded is a large
image on a Web page that is being seen for the first time. The image would get downloaded to
satisfy the img
element on the page, as well as being listed in the cache
manifest. According to the rules for fetching that image only need
be downloaded once, and it can be used both for the cache and for the rendered Web page.
If the previous step fails (e.g. the server returns a 4xx or 5xx response or equivalent, or there is a DNS error, or the connection times out, or the user cancels the download), or if the server returned a redirect, or if the resource is labeled with the "no-store" cache directive, then run the first appropriate step from the following list: [HTTP]
If these steps are being run in parallel for any other URLs in file list, then abort these steps for those other URLs. Run the cache failure steps.
Redirects are fatal because they are either indicative of a network problem (e.g. a captive portal); or would allow resources to be added to the cache under URLs that differ from any URL that the networking model will allow access to, leaving orphan entries; or would allow resources to be stored under URLs different than their true URLs. All of these situations are bad.
Skip this resource. It is dropped from the cache.
Copy the resource and its metadata from the newest application cache in cache group whose completeness flag is complete, and act as if that was the fetched resource, ignoring the resource obtained from the network.
User agents may warn the user of these errors as an aid to development.
These rules make errors for resources listed in the manifest fatal, while making it possible for other resources to be removed from caches when they are removed from the server, without errors, and making non-manifest resources survive server-side errors.
Except for the "no-store" directive, HTTP caching rules that would cause a file to be expired or otherwise not cached are ignored for the purposes of the application cache download process.
Otherwise, the fetching succeeded. Store the resource in the new cache.
If the user agent is not able to store the resource (e.g. because of quota restrictions), the user agent may prompt the user or try to resolve the problem in some other manner (e.g. automatically pruning content in other caches). If the problem cannot be resolved, the user agent must run the cache failure steps.
If the URL being processed was flagged as an "explicit entry" in file list, then categorize the entry as an explicit entry.
If the URL being processed was flagged as a "fallback entry" in file list, then categorize the entry as a fallback entry.
If the URL being processed was flagged as an "master entry" in file list, then categorize the entry as a master entry.
As an optimization, if the resource is an HTML or XML file whose root element is an
html
element with a manifest
attribute
whose value doesn't match the manifest URL of the application cache being processed, then the
user agent should mark the entry as being foreign.
For each cache host associated with an application cache in cache group, queue a post-load task to fire a trusted
event with the name progress
, which does not bubble,
which is cancelable, and which uses the ProgressEvent
interface, at the
ApplicationCache
singleton of the cache host. The lengthComputable
attribute must be set to
true, the total
and the loaded
attributes must be set to the number of files in
file list. The default action of these events must be, if the user agent
shows caching progress, the display of some sort of user interface indicating to the
user that all the files have been downloaded. [PROGRESS-EVENTS]
Store the list of fallback namespaces, and the URLs of the fallback entries that they map to, in new cache.
Store the URLs that form the new online whitelist in new cache.
Store the value of the new online whitelist wildcard flag in new cache.
Store the value of the new cache mode flag in new cache.
For each entry in cache group's list of pending master entries, wait for the resource for this entry to have either completely downloaded or failed.
If the download failed (e.g. the server returns a 4xx or 5xx response or equivalent, or there is a DNS error, the connection times out, or the user cancels the download), or if the resource is labeled with the "no-store" cache directive, then run these substeps:
Unassociate the Document
for this entry from new
cache.
Queue a post-load task to fire a simple event that is
cancelable named error
at the
ApplicationCache
singleton of the Document
for this entry, if there
still is one. The default action of this event must be, if the user agent shows caching
progress, the display of some sort of user interface indicating to the user that the
user agent failed to save the application for offline use.
If this is a cache attempt and this entry is the last entry in cache group's list of pending master entries, then run these further substeps:
Discard cache group and its only application cache, new cache.
If appropriate, remove any user interface indicating that an update for this cache is in progress.
Abort the application cache download process.
Otherwise, remove this entry from cache group's list of pending master entries.
Otherwise, store the resource for this entry in new cache, if it isn't already there, and categorize its entry as a master entry.
Fetch the resource from manifest URL again, with the synchronous flag set, and let second manifest be that resource. HTTP caching semantics should again be honored for this request.
Since caching can be honored, authors are encouraged to avoid setting the cache headers on the manifest in such a way that the user agent would simply not contact the network for this second request; otherwise, the user agent would not notice if the cache had changed during the cache update process.
If the previous step failed for any reason, or if the fetching attempt involved a redirect, or if second manifest and manifest are not byte-for-byte identical, then schedule a rerun of the entire algorithm with the same parameters after a short delay, and run the cache failure steps.
Otherwise, store manifest in new cache, if it's not there already, and categorize its entry as the manifest.
Set the completeness flag of new cache to complete.
Let task list be an empty list of tasks.
If this is a cache attempt, then for each
cache host associated with an application cache in cache
group, create a task to fire a simple event
that is cancelable named cached
at the
ApplicationCache
singleton of the cache host, and append it to task list. The default action of these events must be, if the user agent
shows caching progress, the display of some sort of user interface indicating to
the user that the application has been cached and that they can now use it offline.
Otherwise, it is an upgrade attempt. For each
cache host associated with an application cache in cache
group, create a task to fire a simple event
that is cancelable named updateready
at the
ApplicationCache
singleton of the cache host, and append it to task list. The default action of these events must be, if the user agent
shows caching progress, the display of some sort of user interface indicating to
the user that a new version is available and that they can activate it by reloading the
page.
If appropriate, remove any user interface indicating that an update for this cache is in progress.
Set the update status of cache group to idle.
For each task in task list, queue that task as a post-load task.
The cache failure steps are as follows:
Let task list be an empty list of tasks.
For each entry in cache group's list of pending master entries, run the following further substeps. These steps may be run in parallel for two or more entries at a time.
Wait for the resource for this entry to have either completely downloaded or failed.
Unassociate the Document
for this entry from its application
cache, if it has one.
Create a task to fire a simple event that
is cancelable named error
at the
ApplicationCache
singleton of the Document
for this entry, if there
still is one, and append it to task list. The default action of these
events must be, if the user agent shows caching progress, the display of some sort
of user interface indicating to the user that the user agent failed to save the application for
offline use.
For each cache host still associated with an application cache
in cache group, create a task to fire
a simple event that is cancelable named error
at
the ApplicationCache
singleton of the cache host, and append it to task list. The default action of these events must be, if the user agent
shows caching progress, the display of some sort of user interface indicating to the
user that the user agent failed to save the application for offline use.
Empty cache group's list of pending master entries.
If cache group has an application cache whose completeness flag is incomplete, then discard that application cache.
If appropriate, remove any user interface indicating that an update for this cache is in progress.
Let the status of cache group be idle.
If this was a cache attempt, discard cache group altogether.
For each task in task list, queue that task as a post-load task.
Abort the application cache download process.
Attempts to fetch resources as part of the application cache download process may be done with cache-defeating semantics, to avoid problems with stale or inconsistent intermediary caches.
User agents may invoke the application cache download process, in the background, for any application cache group, at any time (with no cache host). This allows user agents to keep caches primed and to update caches even before the user visits a site.
Each Document
has a list of pending application cache download process
tasks that is used to delay events fired by the algorithm above until the document's load
event has fired. When the Document
is created, the
list must be empty.
When the steps above say to queue a post-load task task, where
task is a task that dispatches an event on a
target ApplicationCache
object target, the user agent must run
the appropriate steps from the following list:
Document
is
ready for post-load tasksQueue the task task.
Add task to target's Document
's list
of pending application cache download process tasks.
The task source for these tasks is the networking task source.
When the application cache selection algorithm
algorithm is invoked with a Document
document and optionally a
manifest URL manifest URL, the user agent must run the first
applicable set of steps from the following list:
Mark the entry for the resource from which document was taken in the application cache from which it was loaded as foreign.
Restart the current navigation from the top of the navigation algorithm, undoing any changes that were made as part of the initial load (changes can be avoided by ensuring that the step to update the session history with the new page is only ever completed after this application cache selection algorithm is run, though this is not required).
The navigation will not result in the same resource being loaded, because "foreign" entries are never picked during navigation.
User agents may notify the user of the inconsistency between the cache manifest and the document's own metadata, to aid in application development.
Associate document with the application cache from which it was loaded. Invoke, in the background, the application cache download process for that application cache's application cache group, with document as the cache host.
Invoke, in the background, the application cache download process for manifest URL, with document as the cache host and with the resource from which document was parsed as the master resource.
If there are relevant application caches that are identified by a URL with the same origin as the URL of document, and that have this URL as one of their entries, excluding entries marked as foreign, then the user agent should use the most appropriate application cache of those that match as an HTTP cache for any subresource loads. User agents may also have other caches in place that are also honored.
The Document
is not associated with any application cache.
If there was a manifest URL, the user agent may report to the user that it was ignored, to aid in application development.
When a cache host is associated with an application cache whose completeness flag is complete, any and all loads for resources related to that cache host other than those for child browsing contexts must go through the following steps instead of immediately invoking the mechanisms appropriate to that resource's scheme:
If the resource is not to be fetched using the HTTP GET mechanism or equivalent, or if applying the URL parser algorithm to both its URL and the application cache's manifest's URL results in two parsed URLs with different scheme components, then fetch the resource normally and abort these steps.
If the resource's URL is a master entry, the manifest, an explicit entry, or a fallback entry in the application cache, then get the resource from the cache (instead of fetching it), and abort these steps.
If there is an entry in the application cache's online whitelist that has the same origin as the resource's URL and that is a prefix match for the resource's URL, then fetch the resource normally and abort these steps.
If the resource's URL has the same origin as the manifest's URL, and there is a fallback namespace f in the application cache that is a prefix match for the resource's URL, then:
Fetch the resource normally. If this results in a redirect to a resource with another origin (indicative of a captive portal), or a 4xx or 5xx status code or equivalent, or if there were network errors (but not if the user canceled the download), then instead get, from the cache, the resource of the fallback entry corresponding to the fallback namespace f. Abort these steps.
If the application cache's online whitelist wildcard flag is open, then fetch the resource normally and abort these steps.
Fail the resource load as if there had been a generic network error.
The above algorithm ensures that so long as the online whitelist wildcard flag is blocking, resources that are not present in the manifest will always fail to load (at least, after the application cache has been primed the first time), making the testing of offline applications simpler.
As a general rule, user agents should not expire application caches, except on request from the user, or after having been left unused for an extended period of time.
Application caches and cookies have similar implications with respect to privacy (e.g. if the site can identify the user when providing the cache, it can store data in the cache that can be used for cookie resurrection). Implementors are therefore encouraged to expose application caches in a manner related to HTTP cookies, allowing caches to be expunged together with cookies and other origin-specific data.
For example, a user agent could have a "delete site-specific data" feature that clears all cookies, application caches, local storage, databases, etc, from an origin all at once.
User agents should consider applying constraints on disk usage of application caches, and care should be taken to ensure that the restrictions cannot be easily worked around using subdomains.
User agents should allow users to see how much space each domain is using, and may offer the user the ability to delete specific application caches.
For predictability, quotas should be based on the uncompressed size of data stored.
How quotas are presented to the user is not defined by this specification. User agents are encouraged to provide features such as allowing a user to indicate that certain sites are trusted to use more than the default quota, e.g. by asynchronously presenting a user interface while a cache is being updated, or by having an explicit whitelist in the user agent's configuration interface.
interface ApplicationCache : EventTarget { // update status const unsigned short UNCACHED = 0; const unsigned short IDLE = 1; const unsigned short CHECKING = 2; const unsigned short DOWNLOADING = 3; const unsigned short UPDATEREADY = 4; const unsigned short OBSOLETE = 5; readonly attribute unsigned short status; // updates void update(); void abort(); void swapCache(); // events attribute EventHandler onchecking; attribute EventHandler onerror; attribute EventHandler onnoupdate; attribute EventHandler ondownloading; attribute EventHandler onprogress; attribute EventHandler onupdateready; attribute EventHandler oncached; attribute EventHandler onobsolete; };
applicationCache
(In a window.) Returns the ApplicationCache
object that applies to the
active document of that Window
.
applicationCache
(In a shared worker.) Returns the ApplicationCache
object that applies to the
current shared worker.
status
Returns the current status of the application cache, as given by the constants defined below.
update
()Invokes the application cache download process.
Throws an InvalidStateError
exception if there is no application cache to
update.
Calling this method is not usually necessary, as user agents will generally take care of updating application caches automatically.
The method can be useful in situations such as long-lived applications. For example, a Web mail application might stay open in a browser tab for weeks at a time. Such an application could want to test for updates each day.
abort
()Cancels the application cache download process.
This method is intended to be used by Web application showing their own caching progress UI, in case the user wants to stop the update (e.g. because bandwidth is limited).
swapCache
()Switches to the most recent application cache, if there is a newer one. If there isn't,
throws an InvalidStateError
exception.
This does not cause previously-loaded resources to be reloaded; for example, images do not suddenly get reloaded and style sheets and scripts do not get reparsed or reevaluated. The only change is that subsequent requests for cached resources will obtain the newer copies.
The updateready
event will fire before this
method can be called. Once it fires, the Web application can, at its leisure, call this method
to switch the underlying cache to the one with the more recent updates. To make proper use of
this, applications have to be able to bring the new features into play; for example, reloading
scripts to enable new features.
An easier alternative to swapCache()
is just to
reload the entire page at a time suitable for the user, using location.reload()
.
There is a one-to-one mapping from cache hosts to
ApplicationCache
objects. The applicationCache
attribute on Window
objects must return the ApplicationCache
object associated with the
Window
object's active document. The applicationCache
attribute
on SharedWorkerGlobalScope
objects must return the ApplicationCache
object associated with the worker.
A Window
or SharedWorkerGlobalScope
object has an
associated ApplicationCache
object even if that cache host has no actual
application cache.
The status
attribute, on getting, must
return the current state of the application cache that the
ApplicationCache
object's cache host is associated with, if any. This
must be the appropriate value from the following list:
UNCACHED
(numeric value 0)The ApplicationCache
object's cache host is not associated with
an application cache at this time.
IDLE
(numeric value 1)The ApplicationCache
object's cache host is associated with an
application cache whose application cache group's update status is idle, and that application
cache is the newest cache in its
application cache group, and the application cache group is not marked
as obsolete.
CHECKING
(numeric value 2)The ApplicationCache
object's cache host is associated with an
application cache whose application cache group's update status is checking.
DOWNLOADING
(numeric value 3)The ApplicationCache
object's cache host is associated with an
application cache whose application cache group's update status is downloading.
UPDATEREADY
(numeric value 4)The ApplicationCache
object's cache host is associated with an
application cache whose application cache group's update status is idle, and whose application
cache group is not marked as obsolete, but
that application cache is not the newest cache in its group.
OBSOLETE
(numeric value 5)The ApplicationCache
object's cache host is associated with an
application cache whose application cache group is marked as obsolete.
If the update()
method is invoked, the user
agent must invoke the application cache download process, in the background, for the
application cache group of the application cache with which the
ApplicationCache
object's cache host is associated, but without giving
that cache host to the algorithm. If there is no such application cache,
or if its application cache group is marked as obsolete, then the method must throw an
InvalidStateError
exception instead.
If the abort()
method is invoked, the user
agent must send a signal to the current application cache download process
for the application cache group of the application cache with which the
ApplicationCache
object's cache host is associated, if any. If there is
no such application cache, or it does not have a current application cache
download process, then do nothing.
If the swapCache()
method is invoked,
the user agent must run the following steps:
Check that ApplicationCache
object's cache host is associated
with an application cache. If it is not, then throw an
InvalidStateError
exception and abort these steps.
Let cache be the application cache with which the
ApplicationCache
object's cache host is associated. (By definition,
this is the same as the one that was found in the previous step.)
If cache's application cache group is marked as obsolete, then unassociate the
ApplicationCache
object's cache host from cache and
abort these steps. (Resources will now load from the network instead of the cache.)
Check that there is an application cache in the same application cache group
as cache whose completeness
flag is complete and that is newer than
cache. If there is not, then throw an InvalidStateError
exception and abort these steps.
Let new cache be the newest application cache in the same application cache group as cache whose completeness flag is complete.
Unassociate the ApplicationCache
object's cache host from cache and instead associate it with new cache.
The following are the event handlers (and their corresponding event handler event types) that must be
supported, as event handler IDL attributes, by all objects implementing the
ApplicationCache
interface:
Event handler | Event handler event type |
---|---|
onchecking | checking
|
onerror | error
|
onnoupdate | noupdate
|
ondownloading | downloading
|
onprogress | progress
|
onupdateready | updateready
|
oncached | cached
|
onobsolete | obsolete
|
[NoInterfaceObject] interface NavigatorOnLine { readonly attribute boolean onLine; };
navigator
. onLine
Returns false if the user agent is definitely offline (disconnected from the network). Returns true if the user agent might be online.
The events online
and offline
are fired when the value of this attribute changes.
The navigator.onLine
attribute must return
false if the user agent will not contact the network when the user follows links or when a script
requests a remote page (or knows that such an attempt would fail), and must return true
otherwise.
When the value that would be returned by the navigator.onLine
attribute of a Window
or
WorkerGlobalScope
changes from true to false, the user agent must queue a
task to fire a simple event named offline
at the Window
or
WorkerGlobalScope
object.
On the other hand, when the value that would be returned by the navigator.onLine
attribute of a Window
or
WorkerGlobalScope
changes from false to true, the user agent must queue a
task to fire a simple event named online
at the Window
or
WorkerGlobalScope
object.
The task source for these tasks is the networking task source.
This attribute is inherently unreliable. A computer can be connected to a network without having Internet access.
In this example, an indicator is updated as the browser goes online and offline.
<!DOCTYPE HTML> <html> <head> <title>Online status</title> <script> function updateIndicator() { document.getElementById('indicator').textContent = navigator.onLine ? 'online' : 'offline'; } </script> </head> <body onload="updateIndicator()" ononline="updateIndicator()" onoffline="updateIndicator()"> <p>The network is: <span id="indicator">(state unknown)</span> </body> </html>