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Question

How can I determine the name of a JavaScript event handler function?

Answer 1

A:

Is an alternative solution viable? Clicking on the link to invoke it's handler to simulate a user clicking, instead of trying to find the handler?

Something like this in jQuery:

$("a.clickable:first").click();

Update: Here's a working example to show how this works on DOM:

<html>
 <head></head>
 <body>
  <a href="javascript:void(0)" onclick="alert('I'm an alert!')">Click me</a>
  <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4/jquery.min.js"&gt;&lt;/script&gt;
  <script type="text/javascript">
   $(function() { $('a').click(); });
  </script>
 </body>
</html>

Nick Craver 2010-01-19 23:25:05

I guess this solution will not work because, I believe, jQuery does not dispatch native DOM-Events events into browser DOM implementation. Instead it probably only invokes those handlers added through jQuery API.

Sergey Ilinsky 2010-01-19 23:30:21

@Sergey Ilinsky: I just tested this, it does work, `<a href="javascript:void(0)" onclick="alert('bob')">Click me</a>` with `$('a').click();` does fire the alert. I added a full example page above so you can test it out as well.

Nick Craver 2010-01-19 23:55:27

jQuery attempts to execute all event handlers, whether declared inline, bound using `addEventListener` or `attachEvent`, or bound using jQuery. Take a look at this demo - http://jsbin.com/owugu/edit and click on the output tab. Check the code under the JavaScript tab

Russ Cam 2010-01-20 00:06:53

Answer 2

+2 A:

To answer the question in your title: no, you can't. You can't get the name because there might not even be a name - it's become quite common to use anonymous functions for this purpose.

For the answer to your second question, see:

How can I programmatically invoke an onclick() event from a anchor tag while keeping the ‘this’ reference in the onclick function?

Shog9 2010-01-19 23:37:26

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How can I determine the name of a JavaScript event handler function?

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