How do I bind a click to an anchor without a framework (javascript)

Question

I know this is easily done in jQuery or any other framework, but that's not really the point. How do I go about 'properly' binding a click event in pure javascript? I know how to do it inline (I know this is terrible)

<a href="doc.html" onclick="myFunc(); return false">click here</a>

and this causes my javascript to execute for a JS enabled browser, and the link to behave normally for those without javascript?

Now, how do I do the same thing in a non-inline manner?

Answer 1

The standard go to for this question is on Quirks Mode: http://www.quirksmode.org/js/events_advanced.html

Answer 2

If you need to assign only one click event, you can assign onclick:

If you have an ID:

myAnchor = document.getElementById("Anchor");
myAnchor.onclick = function() { myFunc(); return false; }

you can also walk through all anchors:

anchors = document.getElementsByTagName("a");

for (var i = 0; i < anchors.length; i++) {   

 anchors[i].onclick = .....

}

There's also a document.getElementsByClassName to simulate jQuery's class selector but it is not supported by all browsers.

If it could be that you need to assign multiple events on one element, go with addEventListener shown by @Jordan and @David Dorward.

Answer 3

The basic way is to use document.getElementByID() to find the element and the use addEventListener to listen for the event.

In your HTML:

<a href="doc.html" id="some-id">click here</a>

In your JavaScript:

var myElement = document.getElementById('some-id');
myElement.addEventListener('click', myFunc);

function myFunc(eventObj) {
  // ...
}

Or you can do it anonymously without defining a function elsewhere:

document.getElementyById('some-id').addEventListener('click', function(eventObj) {
  // ...
});

Answer 4

Give it an ID and you should be able to do:

document.getElementById("the id").onclick = function{ ... }

Answer 5

You don't have to use jQuery, but you could try John Resig's popular addEvent funciton.

addevent(elem, "click",clickevent);  

function addEvent ( obj, type, fn ) {
      if ( obj.attachEvent ) {
        obj["e"+type+fn] = fn;
        obj[type+fn] = function() { obj["e"+type+fn]( window.event ); }
        obj.attachEvent( "on"+type, obj[type+fn] );
      } else
        obj.addEventListener( type, fn, false );
    }

There are more to be considered to'properly' bind an event on HTML tags in pure javascript.

http://www.pagecolumn.com/javascript/bind_event_in_js_object.htm

Answer 6

This is a nice cross-browser method

//this should be defined for global consumption
var on = (function(){
    if ("addEventListener" in window) {
        return function(target, type, listener){
            target.addEventListener(type, listener, false);
        };
    }
    else {
        return function(object, sEvent, fpNotify){
            object.attachEvent("on" + sEvent, function(){
                fpNotify(window.event);
            });
        };
    }
}());


on(document.getElementById("myAnchor", "click", function(){
    alert(this.href);
});