navigator.onLine not always working

MDN about navigator.onLine:

In Chrome and Safari, if the browser is not able to connect to a local area network (LAN) or a router, it is offline; all other conditions return true. So while you can assume that the browser is offline when it returns a false value, you cannot assume that a true value necessarily means that the browser can access the internet.

As described above, this property is not trustable, so, in my opinion, the best workaround is an ajax call to a server-side page. If the browser is offline, then the connection will fail and, thus, the onerror event will be called. Otherwise, the onload event is called:

function isOnline(no,yes){
    var xhr = XMLHttpRequest ? new XMLHttpRequest() : new ActiveXObject('Microsoft.XMLHttp');
    xhr.onload = function(){
        if(yes instanceof Function){
            yes();
        }
    }
    xhr.onerror = function(){
        if(no instanceof Function){
            no();
        }
    }
    xhr.open("GET","anypage.php",true);
    xhr.send();
}

isOnline(
    function(){
        alert("Sorry, we currently do not have Internet access.");
    },
    function(){
        alert("Succesfully connected!");
    }
);

If you are using axios:

axios.request(options).catch(function(error) {
  if (!error.response) {
    // network error (server is down or no internet)
  } else {
    // http status code
    const code = error.response.status
    // data from server while error
    const response = error.response.data
  }
});

Tags:

Javascript