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?
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.
onClick property and addEventListener function? Which is better? I believe there is also a click function, so could you also do myAnchor.click = (event) => ...?
The basic way is to use document.getElementById() to find the element and then use addEventListener to listen for the event.
In your HTML:
<a href="doc.html" id="some-id">click here</a>
In your JavaScript:
function myFunc(eventObj) {
// ...
}
var myElement = document.getElementById('some-id');
myElement.addEventListener('click', myFunc);
Or you can use an anonymous function:
document.getElementById('some-id').addEventListener('click', function(eventObj) {
// ...
});
addEventListener - you have to use attachEvent instead.
This is a nice cross-browser method
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);
});
The standard go to for this question is on Quirks Mode: http://www.quirksmode.org/js/events_advanced.html
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
