Is it possible to do it this way, as opposed to using something like Raphael or jQuery SVG?
Definitely.
If it is possible, what's the technique?
This annotated code snippet works:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>SVG Illustrator Test</title>
</head>
<body>
<object data="alpha.svg" type="image/svg+xml"
id="alphasvg" width="100%" height="100%"></object>
<script>
var a = document.getElementById("alphasvg");
// It's important to add an load event listener to the object,
// as it will load the svg doc asynchronously
a.addEventListener("load",function(){
// get the inner DOM of alpha.svg
var svgDoc = a.contentDocument;
// get the inner element by id
var delta = svgDoc.getElementById("delta");
// add behaviour
delta.addEventListener("mousedown",function(){
alert('hello world!')
}, false);
}, false);
</script>
</body>
</html>
Note that a limitation of this technique is that it is restricted by the same-origin policy, so alpha.svg
must be hosted on the same domain as the .html
file, otherwise the inner DOM of the object will be inaccessible.
Important thing to run this HTML, you need host HTML file to web server like IIS, Tomcat