Great question! Let's break this down into clear sections to cover all your points:

First, let's clarify the core difference between the two, then dive into practical use cases:

Use location.href when... #

• You want users to be able to navigate back to the current page using the browser's back button. This is the standard navigation behavior for most everyday scenarios.
  • Example: A user clicks a link from a blog post list to a single article. After reading, they should be able to hit back to return to the list seamlessly. Use:

    location.href = "/blog/post-123";
    

• What it does: Adds a new entry to the browser's history stack. The current page stays in the stack, so back navigation works exactly as users expect.

Use location.replace() when... #

• You don't want users to be able to return to the current page via the back button. This is for one-way navigation where the original page is no longer relevant:
  • Post-login redirect: After a user successfully logs in from the login page, redirect them to the dashboard. You don't want them to accidentally back into the login page while already authenticated.

    location.replace("/dashboard");
    

  • URL redirects (old to new): If you're moving content to a new URL, use replace() to avoid cluttering the history stack with outdated links. Users won't end up back on the broken old page.
  • Post-form submission: After a user submits a form (like a checkout or contact form), redirect to a success page. Using replace() prevents them from hitting back and resubmitting the form by mistake.
• What it does: Replaces the current entry in the history stack with the new page. The original page is removed from the stack entirely, so back navigation skips it.

Short answer: No, but they behave similarly when assigning a URL. Here's the full breakdown:

• window.location is a complete Location object that includes multiple properties (like href, host, pathname, search) and built-in methods (like replace(), assign(), reload()).
• window.location.href is a string property of the Location object that holds the full URL of the current page.
• When you assign a string to window.location, the browser automatically treats it as setting the href property. So these two lines do the exact same thing:

  window.location = "https://example.com";
  window.location.href = "https://example.com";
  

• The difference becomes clear when reading values or using methods:
  • To get the current URL as a string, you need window.location.href (reading window.location returns the Location object itself, not the URL string).
  • To call methods like replace() or reload(), you must use window.location (since window.location.href is a string and doesn't have these methods attached).

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者bhb