blocking-transitions.md

Blocking Transitions

history lets you block navigation away from the current page using the history.block(blocker: Blocker) API. For example, you can make sure the user knows that if they leave the current page they will lose some unsaved changes they've made.

// Block navigation and register a callback that
// fires when a navigation attempt is blocked.
let unblock = history.block((tx) => {
  // Navigation was blocked! Let's show a confirmation dialog
  // so the user can decide if they actually want to navigate
  // away and discard changes they've made in the current page.
  let url = tx.location.pathname;
  if (window.confirm(`Are you sure you want to go to ${url}?`)) {
    // Unblock the navigation.
    unblock();

    // Retry the transition.
    tx.retry();
  }
});

This example uses window.confirm, but you could also use your own custom confirm dialog if you'd prefer.

Caveats

history.block will call your callback for all in-page navigation attempts, but for navigation that reloads the page (e.g. the refresh button or a link that doesn't use history.push) it registers a beforeunload handler to prevent the navigation. In modern browsers you are not able to customize this dialog. Instead, you'll see something like this (Chrome):

One subtle side effect of registering a beforeunload handler is that the page will not be salvageable in the pagehide event. This means the page may not be reused by the browser, so things like timers, scroll position, and event sources will not be reused when the user navigates back to that page.