JavaScript before leaving the page

Question

onunload (or onbeforeunload) cannot redirect the user to another page. This is for security reasons.

If you want to show a prompt before the user leaves the page, use onbeforeunload:

window.onbeforeunload = function(){
  return 'Are you sure you want to leave?';
};

Or with jQuery:

$(window).bind('beforeunload', function(){
  return 'Are you sure you want to leave?';
});

This will just ask the user if they want to leave the page or not, you cannot redirect them if they select to stay on the page. If they select to leave, the browser will go where they told it to go.

You can use onunload to do stuff before the page is unloaded, but you cannot redirect from there (Chrome 14+ blocks alerts inside onunload):

window.onunload = function() {
    alert('Bye.');
}

Or with jQuery:

$(window).unload(function(){
  alert('Bye.');
});

This code when you also detect form state changed or not.

$('#form').data('serialize',$('#form').serialize()); // On load save form current state

$(window).bind('beforeunload', function(e){
    if($('#form').serialize()!=$('#form').data('serialize'))return true;
    else e=null; // i.e; if form state change show warning box, else don't show it.
});

You can Google JQuery Form Serialize function, this will collect all form inputs and save it in array. I guess this explain is enough :)

This will alert on leaving current page

<script type='text/javascript'>
function goodbye(e) {
    if(!e) e = window.event;
    //e.cancelBubble is supported by IE - this will kill the bubbling process.
    e.cancelBubble = true;
    e.returnValue = 'You sure you want to leave?'; //This is displayed on the dialog

    //e.stopPropagation works in Firefox.
    if (e.stopPropagation) {
        e.stopPropagation();
        e.preventDefault();
    }
}
window.onbeforeunload=goodbye; 

</script>

This what I did to show the confirmation message just when I have unsaved data

window.onbeforeunload = function() {
  if (isDirty) {
    return 'There is unsaved data.';
  }
  return undefined;
}

returning undefined will disable the confirmation

Note: returning null will not work with IE

Also you can use undefined to disable the confirmation

window.onbeforeunload = undefined;

In order to have a popop with Chrome 14+, you need to do the following :

jQuery(window).bind('beforeunload', function(){
    return 'my text';
});

The user will be asked if he want to stay or leave.

You can use the following one-liner to always ask the user before leaving the page.

window.onbeforeunload = s => "";

To ask the user when something on the page has been modified, see this answer.

Normally you want to show this message, when the user has made changes in a form, but they are not saved.

Take this approach to show a message, only when the user has changed something

var form = $('#your-form'),
  original = form.serialize()

form.submit(function(){
  window.onbeforeunload = null
})

window.onbeforeunload = function(){
  if (form.serialize() != original)
    return 'Are you sure you want to leave?'
}