Wrong extraction of .attr("href") in IE7 vs all other browsers?

Question

Can it really be true that the attr("href") command for a link is handled very different in IE7 in comparison to all other browsers?

Let's say I have a page at http://example.com/page.html and I have this HTML:

<a href="#someAnchor" class="lnkTest">Link text</a>

and this jQuery:

var strHref = $(".lnkTest").attr("href");

Then in IE7 the value of the strHref variable will be "http://example.com/page.htm#someAnchor" but in other browsers it will be "#someAnchor".

I believe that the last mentioned case is the most correct one, so is it just a case of IE7 being a bad boy or is it a bug in jQuery?

Answer 1

It's certainly not a bug in jQuery but instead browsers' inconsistent implementations of .getAttribute('href') - I suggest using just .get(0).href for consistency.

Seems like you can access the attribute text in IE and Mozilla using .get(0).getAttribute('href', 2) if you don't want the absolute URI. Note however this won't work in Opera and I haven't tested in Safari/Chrome/anything else.

You could also strip out the domain or split on '#' for .get(0).href and use the second part of the array assuming it even contains '#' ( check .length ).

http://www.glennjones.net/Post/809/getAttributehrefbug.htm

Answer 2

I use:

var hrefArr = $(this).attr('href').split('/');
var id = hrefArr[hrefArr.length-1];

when I need everything after the last "/".