Clear html history created by pushState on refresh

Question

I have array of states and index of the array in history.state and on popstate I read the content of the array, it work fine but when I go back to first page and refresh the array is gone (which is normal) but forward history state remain.

Is it possilbe to remove fake history that was created using pushState?

I can't store my state in localStorage because I have functions in my state array.

Answer 1

My idea - override whole history:

for (i = 0; i < 50; i++) {
  history.pushState({}, '');
}

Answer 2

There is no way to clear the session history or to disable the back/forward navigation from unprivileged code. The closest available solution is the location.replace() method, which replaces the current item of the session history with the provided URL. Mozilla

The only way is this (but I think you know it)

var length=history.length;     
history.go(-length);
window.location.replace("urlToRedirect");

after using replace() the current page will not be saved in session history, meaning the user won't be able to use the Back button to navigate to it.

Answer 3

If you read the specification of History API for pushState, in step 4 it states

4. 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.

So depending on what you are trying to do, you could make a special case for when first loading the page and push a state (one you will consider your first), and in doing so clear the forward states of the history.