using jQuery to attach an extra data to every link in the page

I am creating a web application with a non-popular programming language on the server side. Therefore much of the authentication code needs to be developed by myself.

On the server side I need to receive an authentication string with every GET request that comes from the client so that I can decide if this is a valid user (otherwise I direct the user to a login screen).

I guess I can use the jQuery to add something to the href parameter of all links, something line:

jQuery("a").attr("href).append("?token='"+tokenStr+"'");

But then if the link already has a "?", it will introduce a bug. I prefer to send the information as POST to the server (any other alternative开发者_开发技巧?) But I'm not sure if it's possible to do that in HTML.

the reason I don't want the authentication token to be a part of the URL is because if the user bookmarks that page, the server will direct him to the login page because the token will expire after some time.

---

Try this:

var tokenStr = 'something';
$('a').each(function(){
    var elem = $(this),
        href = elem.attr('href'),
        hasQueryString = href.indexOf('?') > -1;
    if (hasQueryString) {
        elem.attr('href', href + '&token=' + tokenStr);
    } else {
        elem.attr('href', href + '?token=' + tokenStr);
    }
});

Here's a better version that allows for hashed (#) / anchors within the url:

var tokenStr = 'something';
$('a').each(function () {
    var elem = $(this),
        parts = elem.attr('href').split('#'),
        hasQueryString = parts[0].indexOf('?') > -1;
    if (parts[0].length > 0) {
        parts[0] = parts[0] + (hasQueryString ? '&' : '?') + 'token=' + tokenStr;
    }
    elem.attr('href', (parts.length > 1 ? parts.join('#') : parts.join()));
});

Also, you can inject the "token" parameter as a hidden field to all forms on the page too:

$('form').append(
    $('<input type="hidden" name="token"/>').attr('value', tokenStr)
);

---

You can use both (POST or GET) in your page, and check for information on security and other implications : http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/forms/methods.html

However, I don't quite get why you don't just parse that link of yours and act on the ? you might find with the appropriate response, such as adding a + instead of a ?

Edit: mblase is right.

---

You can attach hidden input to every form on page, to support sending a token via POST or GET.

$("form").append('<input type="hidden" name="token" value="'+tokenStr+'"/>');

And to add token to any links on page use: EDIT: actually there's a problem with any other implementations of appending token and that is the case when you have link with some hash in it, e.g. /mypage.html?foo=bar#content. We have to detect whenever href of link has hash character to properly append token.

Updated code below:

$("a").each(function() {
    var gps = this.href.split('#');        
    gps[0] = gps[0].indexOf('?')>-1 ? '&'+tokenStr : '?'+tokenStr;
    this.href = gps.length > 1 ? gps.join('#') : gps.join();
});