I want to get the href of an anchor element when it is clicked. I am using the following javascript code:
document.addEventListener('click', function (event)
{
event = event || window.event;
var el = event.target || event.srcElement;
if (el instanceof HTMLAnchorElement)
{
console.log(el.getAttribute('href'));
}
}, true);
This works perfectly for an embedded anchor such as this:
<div><p><a href='link'></a></p><div>
But it doesn't work when I am working with an anchor and an image:
<div><a href='link'><img></a></div>
The event.target
is returning the image instead of the anchor. The javascript code can be amended with the following if
case to get around this:
document.addEventListener('click', function (event)
{
event = event || window.event;
var el = event.target || event.srcElement;
if (el instanceof HTMLImageElement)
{
// Using parentNode to get the image element parent - the anchor element.
console.log(el.parentNode.getAttribute('href'));
}
else if (el instanceof HTMLAnchorElement)
{
console.log(el.getAttribute('href'));
}
}, true);
But this doesn't seem very elegant and I'm wondering if there is a better way.
!IMPORTANT! NOTE: Keep in mind, I have no access to an ID or class, or any other traditional identifier for that matter. All I know is that there will be an anchor clicked and I need to get its href. I don't even know where it will be, if it exists or will be created later.
EDIT: Please no jQuery or other javascript libraries.
Instead of looping all anchors in the DOM, lookup from the event.target
element.
Using JavaScript's .closest() MDN Docs (PS: polyfill for IE )
addEventListener('click', function (event) { event.preventDefault(); // Don't navigate! const anchor = event.target.closest("a"); // Find closest Anchor (or self) if (!anchor) return; // Not found. Exit here. console.log( anchor.getAttribute('href')); // Log to test });
<a href="http://stackoverflow.com/a/29223576/383904"> <span> <img src="//placehold.it/200x60?text=Click+me"> </span> </a> <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/a/29223576/383904"> Or click me </a>
it basically works like jQuery's .closest() which does
Closest or Self (Find closest parent... else - target me!)
better depicted in the example above.
Rather than adding a global click
handler, why not just target only anchor tags?
var anchors = document.getElementsByTagName("a");
for (var i = 0, length = anchors.length; i < length; i++) {
var anchor = anchors[i];
anchor.addEventListener('click', function() {
// `this` refers to the anchor tag that's been clicked
console.log(this.getAttribute('href'));
}, true);
};
If you want to stick with the document-wide click handler then you could crawl upwards to determine if the thing clicked is-or-is-contained-within a link like so:
document.addEventListener('click', function(event) {
event = event || window.event;
var target = event.target || event.srcElement;
while (target) {
if (target instanceof HTMLAnchorElement) {
console.log(target.getAttribute('href'));
break;
}
target = target.parentNode;
}
}, true);
This way at least you'd avoid writing brittle code that has to account for all of the possible types of anchor-children and nested structure.
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