Access a window by window name

Question

If I open a window using

window.open(\'myurl.html\', \'windowname\', \'width=100,height=100\');

How do I refer to the new window (from the

Answer 1

afaik there's no way like windows['windowname']. The 'windowname' assigned in window.open() can be addressed as a target in <a target="windowname" [...] >

Answer 2

Try open that window with the name, but URL is '' again, to check if it's a blank window or not. If it's in open, then you will get the window; if not, a new window open, and you need close it. Add the children in localStorage will help to prevent to open the new blank window.

Please check my code in https://github.com/goldentom66/ParentChildWindow

Answer 3

Petr is correct:

var w = window.open("", "nameofwindow");

works in all browsers, I am using it to retrieve the reference to the window object previously opened by a different page. The only problem is the initial opening of the page, if the popup does not exist, you will get a new window with a blank page.

I tried invoking a Javascript function inside the context of the other document in order to check whether I opened a new window or retrieved the already active page. If the check fails, I just invoke window.open again to actually load my popup content:

var w = window.open("http://mydomain.com/myPopup", "nameofwindow");

Hope that helps.

Answer 4

It is not possible. The windowName is just to be used in target="..." of links/forms or to use the same name again in another window.open call to open a new url in that window.

Answer 5

In firefox (might work in other browsers too, but now it's not my concern) I was able to reference one window accross multiple page loads with

var w = window.open("", "nameofwindow");

This opens new window if it doesn't exist and return reference to existing window if it does exist without changing contents of the window.

With jQuery I was then able to append new content, to make quick collection of interresting links like this

$('body', w.document).append(link_tag);

Answer 6

Sorry I am posting late, but if you still have the other window open, and they are on the same domain, you can run, on the first window:

function getReference(w) {
   console.log('Hello from', w);
}

And on the second window:

window.opener.getReference(window);