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Performance Testing:Why PTS strips the number sign (#) and fragment from saved URLs

Last Updated:Mar 11, 2026

The fragment portion of a URL -- everything from the # onward -- is never sent to the server, so PTS strips it when you save a URL. This is expected behavior.

How URL fragments work

A URL fragment identifies a location within a page. In http://www.example.com/index.html#abc, the #abc portion tells the browser to scroll to the element with the ID abc on index.html. The fragment only affects what happens in the browser after the page loads -- the server never receives it.

How this applies to single-page applications

Hybrid (Native + Web) apps commonly use a single-page application (SPA) architecture with hash-based routing, where the # in the URL determines which view to display. For example, http://www.example.com/app#/dashboard and http://www.example.com/app#/settings render different views in the browser, but the server receives the same request for http://www.example.com/app.

Hash-based routes all resolve to the same server-side resource. The URLs saved in PTS reflect exactly what the server receives.