Which one is better approach window.parent.location.href or window.top.location

Question

I am working in a project where I have to redirect on Error Page in a particular scenario. For that I have created Error.aspx page. Right now I am using window.top.location.href = "../Error.aspx" and it generate http://localhost/app_web/Error.aspx and its working fine except once (which shows Message http://xyz/ErrorPage.aspx' does not exist. ). So can anyone suggest which is the better option for this.

Thanks

Answer 1

top is "better than" parent if your intent is to framebust your page into the top level, because your page may be inside a frame that is itself inside a frame.

As for your relative path problem, you may want to try:

var local = location.pathname.split("/");
local.pop(); // remove the filename
local.pop(); // remove the containing directory
local.push("Error.aspx");
local = location.protocol+"//"+location.hostname+"/"+local.join("/");
top.location.href = local;

Answer 2

window.parent refers to the parent window of the current window. That parent may have it's own parent, which has its own parent etc.

window.top refers to this top most window; e.g. window.parent.parent.parent[...];

In this circumstance however, you probably only want to redirect the current window, e.g;

window.location.href = "../Error.aspx";

For more info, see the documentation on window.parent, window.top and window.location.