Click a link with Javascript when there is no element ID

Question

Please forgive me if this has already been answered somewhere but I just can't find what I'm looking for. I'm using Greasemonkey for Firefox and Tampermonkey in Chrome to try to create a Javascipt to change how I interact with a webpage. Upon page load, I'd like to automatically open a link in a new tab in the background. This link is slightly different each time I load the page. The element from the webpage is this:

<a href="/cgi/admin/user/ssh_login/*" target="_blank">SSH</a>

The part with the * is what's different each time.

So how can I automatically click that link upon page load if it doesn't have an elementID or at the very least an elementName?

What is the surrounding markup? Is it inside a div container with id provided? — barfoos
– barfoos, Commented Oct 5, 2015 at 15:54
why cant you give this link an id? <a id="someID" href="/cgi/admin/user/ssh_login/*" target="_blank">SSH</a> Does something prevent you from doing this when you are generating the link? — david tallon
– david tallon, Commented Oct 5, 2015 at 15:54
document.querySelector('a').fireEvent('click') - I have to say that this looks dodgy. Open a tab in the background and auto-click a link? You better not want to use this for evil. — somethinghere
– somethinghere, Commented Oct 5, 2015 at 15:55
@somethinghere Note they might not want to click every <a> and only a certain one by it's content or href. — Spencer Wieczorek
– Spencer Wieczorek, Commented Oct 5, 2015 at 15:57

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 11:51:59Z

8

var link = document.querySelector('[href*="/cgi/admin/user/ssh_login/"]');
link.click();

Edit:

Open link in a background tab in chrome (based on this answer)

var link = document.querySelector('[href*="/cgi/admin/user/ssh_login/"]');
var url = link.getAttribute('href');
openNewBackgroundTab(url);

function openNewBackgroundTab(url){
    var a = document.createElement("a");
    a.href = url;
    var evt = document.createEvent("MouseEvents");
    //the tenth parameter of initMouseEvent sets ctrl key
    evt.initMouseEvent("click", true, true, window, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,
                                true, false, false, false, 0, null);
    a.dispatchEvent(evt);
}

edited May 23, 2017 at 11:51

CommunityBot

11 silver badge

answered Oct 5, 2015 at 15:58

bcr

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16 Comments

Spencer Wieczorek Over a year ago

@Mr_Green .click() fires the click event, not onclick which defines it.

bcr Over a year ago

onclick is an inline event listener. click() simulates a mouse click.

Mr_Green Over a year ago

another question, why [href*= wouldn't [href^= works here as we know it starts from there only?

bcr Over a year ago

@Mr_Green it sure would, *= was just the first one that came to mind.

Spencer Wieczorek Over a year ago

@MisterPyrrhuloxia window.onload = function(){ /*code*/ }

|

atoms · Accepted Answer · 2015-10-05 16:00:30Z

0

If the content of the anchor is always going to be 'SSH' you can use;

$("a:contains('SSH')")

answered Oct 5, 2015 at 16:00

atoms

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