What does href expression a href javascript a do

Question

I have seen the following href used in webpages from time to time   However  I don t understand what this is trying to do or the technique   Can someone elaborate please    lt a href  javascript    gt  lt  a gt

User · Answer

It s used to write js codes inside of href instead of event listeners like onclick and avoiding   links in href to make a tags valid for HTML  Interesting fact I had a research on how to use javascript  inside of href attribute and got the result that I can write multiple lines in it   lt a href  quot       javascript          a   4          console log a              a    2           console log a              if a  lt  6                console log  a is lower than 6                       else              console log  a is greater than 6            function log s               console log s                     log  function implementation working too      quot  gt Click here lt  a gt    Tested in chrome Version 68 0 3440 106  Official Build   64-bit   Tested in Firefox Quantum 61 0 1  64-bit

User · Answer

lt a href  javascript void 0    gt  lt  a gt    javascript  tells the browser going to write javascript code

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Refer to this     lt a href  Http   WWW stackoverflow com  gt Link to the website opened in different tab lt  a gt   lt a href   MyDive  gt Link to the div in the page look at the chaneged url  lt  a gt   lt a href  javascript    gt Nothing happens if there is no javaScript to render lt  a gt

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lt a href  javascript alert  Hello     gt  lt  a gt    is just shorthand for    lt a href    onclick  alert  Hello    return false   gt  lt  a gt

User · Answer

It is a way of making a link do absolutely nothing when clicked  unless Javascript events are bound to it    It is a way of running Javascript instead of following a link    lt a href  Javascript  doStuff     gt link lt  a gt    When there isn t actually javascript to run  like your example  it does nothing

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Old thread but thought I d just add that the reason developers use this construct is not to create a dead link  but because javascript URLs for some reason do not pass references to the active html element correctly    e g  handler function this id  works as onClick but not as a javascript URL     Thus it s a choice between writing pedantically standards-compliant code that involves you in having to manually adjust the call for each hyperlink  or slightly non-standard code which can be written once and used everywhere

User · Answer

1  Use that java script to Clear an HTML row Or Delete a row using the id set to a span and use JQuery to set a function to that span s click event      2  Dynamically set the div html to a string variable and replace  id  with a 1 or 2 etc  cell of a larger div table and rows   lt div class  quot table-cell quot  gt       lt span id  quot clearRow id  quot  gt           lt a href  quot javascript  quot  style- quot color  c32029  align right  font-size 8pt  quot  gt Clear lt  a gt       lt  span gt   lt  div gt    lt div class  quot table-cell quot  gt      lt span id  quot deleteRow id  quot  gt          lt a href  quot javascript  quot  style- quot color  c32029  align right  font-size 8pt  quot  gt Delete lt  a gt      lt  span gt   lt  div gt     JQuery - Clear row    quot  clearRow quot    idNum  click function           quot someIDOrWildcardSelector quot    idNum  val  quot  quot           quot someIDOrWildcardSelector quot    idNum  val  quot  quot           quot someIDOrWildcardSelector quot    idNum  val  quot  quot           JQuery to remove   delete an html row    quot  deleteRow quot    idNum  click function          depending upon levels of parent   child use 1 to many  parent   parent   parent         this  parent   remove

User · Answer

a not  href     cursor  pointer

User · Answer

An  lt a gt  element is invalid HTML unless it has either an href or name attribute   If you want it to render correctly as a link  ie underlined  hand pointer  etc   then it will only do so if it has a href attribute   Code like this is therefore sometimes used as a way of making a link  but without having to provide an actual URL in the href attribute  The developer obviously wanted the link itself not to do anything  and this was the easiest way he knew   He probably has some javascript event code elsewhere which is triggered when the link is clicked  and that will be what he wants to actually happen  but he wants it to look like a normal  lt a gt  tag link   Some developers use href     for the same purpose  but this causes the browser to jump to the top of the page  which may not be wanted  And he couldn t simply leave the href blank  because href    is a link back to the current page  ie it causes a page refresh    There are ways around these things  Using an empty bit of Javascript code in the href is one of them  and although it isn t the best solution  it does work

User · Answer

basically instead of using the link to move pages  or anchors   using this method launches a javascript function s    lt script gt  function doSomething       alert  hello      lt  script gt   lt a href  javascript doSomething     gt click me lt  a gt    clicking the link will fire the alert

User · Answer

The best way to always render a link properly is with the css as follows   a  cursor  pointer  important    One should avoid to follow un-necessary things like mentioned in the thread

User · Answer

There are several mechanisms to avoid a link to reach its destination  The one from the question is not much intuitive  A cleaner option is to use href  quot  no quot  where  no is a non-defined anchor in the document  You can use a more semantic name such as  disable  or  action to increase readability  Benefits of the approach   Avoids the  quot moving to the top quot  effect of the empty href  quot   quot  Avoids the use of javascript  Drawbacks   You must be sure the anchor name is not used in the document  The URL changes to include the  non-existing  anchor as fragment and a new browser history entry is created  This means that clicking the  quot back quot  button after clicking the link won t behave as expected   Since the  lt a gt  element is not acting as a link  the best option in these cases is not using an  lt a gt  element but a  lt div gt  and provide the desired link-like style

[javascript] What does href expression <a href="javascript:;"></a> do?

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