How to force reloading a page when using browser back button?

I need to somehow detect that the user has pressed a browsers back button and reload the page with refresh (reloading the content and CSS) using jquery.

How to detect such action via jquery?

Because right now some elements are not reloaded if I use the back button in a browser. But if I use links in the website everything is refreshed and showed correctly.

IMPORTANT!

Some people have probably misunderstood what I want. I don't want to refresh the current page. I want to refresh the page that is loaded after I press the back button. here is what I mean in a more detailed way:

user is visiting page1.
while on page1 - he clicks on a link to page2.
he is redirected to the page2
now (Important part!) he clicks on the back button in browser because he wants to go back to page1
he is back on the page1 - and now the page1 is being reloaded and something is alerted like "You are back!"

You can use pageshow event to handle situation when browser navigates to your page through history traversal:

window.addEventListener( "pageshow", function ( event ) {
  var historyTraversal = event.persisted || 
                         ( typeof window.performance != "undefined" && 
                              window.performance.navigation.type === 2 );
  if ( historyTraversal ) {
    // Handle page restore.
    window.location.reload();
  }
});

Note that HTTP cache may be involved too. You need to set proper cache related HTTP headers on server to cache only those resources that need to be cached. You can also do forced reload to instuct browser to ignore HTTP cache: window.location.reload( true ). But I don't think that it is best solution.

For more information check:

Working with BFCache article on MDN
WebKit Page Cache II – The unload Event by Brady Eidson
pageshow event reference on MDN
Ajax, back button and DOM updates question
JavaScript - bfcache/pageshow event - event.persisted always set to false? question

It's been a while since this was posted but I found a more elegant solution if you are not needing to support old browsers.

You can do a check with

performance.navigation.type

Documentation including browser support is here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Performance/navigation

So to see if the page was loaded from history using back you can do

if(performance.navigation.type == 2){
   location.reload(true);
}

The 2 indicates the page was accessed by navigating into the history. Other possibilities are-

0:The page was accessed by following a link, a bookmark, a form submission, or a script, or by typing the URL in the address bar.

1:The page was accessed by clicking the Reload button or via the Location.reload() method.

255: Any other way

These are detailed here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/PerformanceNavigation

Note Performance.navigation.type is now deprecated in favour of PerformanceNavigationTiming.type which returns 'navigate' / 'reload' / 'back_forward' / 'prerender': https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/PerformanceNavigationTiming/type

Just use jquery :

jQuery( document ).ready(function( $ ) {

   //Use this inside your document ready jQuery 
   $(window).on('popstate', function() {
      location.reload(true);
   });

});

The above will work 100% when back or forward button has been clicked using ajax as well.

if it doesn't, there must be a misconfiguration in a different part of the script.

For example it might not reload if something like one of the example in the previous post is used window.history.pushState('', null, './');

so when you do use history.pushState(); make sure you use it properly.

Suggestion in most cases you will just need:

history.pushState(url, '', url);

No window.history... and make sure url is defined.

Hope that helps..

Since performance.navigation is now deprecated, you can try this:

var perfEntries = performance.getEntriesByType("navigation");

if (perfEntries[0].type === "back_forward") {
    location.reload(true);
}

You should use a hidden input as a refresh indicator, with a value of "no":

<input type="hidden" id="refresh" value="no">

Now using jQuery, you can check its value:

$(document).ready(function(e) {
    var $input = $('#refresh');

    $input.val() == 'yes' ? location.reload(true) : $input.val('yes');
});

When you click on the back button, the values in hidden fields retain the same value as when you originally left the page.

So the first time you load the page, the input's value would be "no". When you return to the page, it'll be "yes" and your JavaScript code will trigger a refresh.

How to force reloading a page when using browser back button?

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