JavaScript function in href vs onclick

Question

I want to run a simple JavaScript function on a click without any redirection   Is there any difference or benefit between putting the JavaScript call in the href attribute   like this     lt a href  javascript my function   window print     gt      lt  a gt      vs  putting it in the onclick attribute  binding it to the onclick event

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I experienced that the javascript  hrefs did not work when the page was embedded in Outlook s webpage feature where a mail folder is set to instead show an url

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Personally  I find putting javascript calls in the HREF tag annoying  I usually don t really pay attention to whether or not something is a javascript link or not  and often times want to open things in a new window  When I try doing this with one of these types of links  I get a blank page with nothing on it and javascript in my location bar  However  this is sidestepped a bit by using an onlick

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Putting the onclick within the href would offend those who believe strongly in separation of content from behavior action  The argument is that your html content should remain focused solely on content  not on presentation or behavior   The typical path these days is to use a javascript library  eg  jquery  and create an event handler using that library  It would look something like      a   click  function e   e preventDefault      your code here    return false

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In terms of javascript  one difference is that the this keyword in the onclick handler will refer to the DOM element whose onclick attribute it is  in this case the  lt a gt  element   whereas this in the href attribute will refer to the window object   In terms of presentation  if an href attribute is absent from a link  i e   lt a onclick         gt   then  by default  browsers will display the text cursor  and not the often-desired pointer cursor  since it is treating the  lt a gt  as an anchor  and not a link   In terms of behavior  when specifying an action by navigation via href  the browser will typically support opening that href in a separate window using either a shortcut or context menu  This is not possible when specifying an action only via onclick     However  if you re asking what is the best way to get dynamic action from the click of a DOM object  then attaching an event using javascript separate from the content of the document is the best way to go  You could do this in a number of ways  A common way is to use a javascript library like jQuery to bind an event    lt script type  text javascript  src    ajax googleapis com ajax libs jquery 1 10 2 jquery min js  gt  lt  script gt   lt a id  link  href  http   example com action  gt link text lt  a gt   lt script type  text javascript  gt         a link   click function           action            lt  script gt

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the best way to do this is with    lt a href     onclick  someFunction e   gt  lt  a gt    The problem is that this WILL add a hash     to the end of the page s URL in the browser  thus requiring the user to click the back button twice to go to the page before yours  Considering this  you need to add some code to stop event propagation  Most javascript toolkits will already have a function for this  For example  the dojo toolkit uses   dojo stopEvent event     to do so

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The top answer is a very bad practice  one should never ever link to an empty hash as it can create problems down the road   Best is to bind an event handler to the element as numerous other people have stated  however   lt a href  javascript doStuff     gt do stuff lt  a gt  works perfectly in every modern browser  and I use it extensively when rendering templates to avoid having to rebind for each instance  In some cases  this approach offers better performance  YMMV  Another interesting tid-bit      onclick  amp  href have different behaviors when calling javascript directly    onclick will pass this context correctly  whereas href won t  or in other words  lt a href  javascript doStuff this   gt no context lt  a gt  won t work  whereas  lt a onclick  javascript doStuff this   gt no context lt  a gt  will   Yes  I omitted the href  While that doesn t follow the spec  it will work in all browsers  although  ideally it should include a href  javascript void 0    for good measure

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This works   lt a href     id  sampleApp  onclick  myFunction    return false   gt Click Here lt  a gt

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lt hr gt               lt h3 class  form-signin-heading  gt  lt i class  icon-edit  gt  lt  i gt  Register lt  h3 gt               lt button data-placement  top  id  signin student  onclick  window location  signup student php   id  btn student  name  login  class  btn btn-info  type  submit  gt Student lt  button gt               lt div class  pull-right  gt                   lt button data-placement  top  id  signin teacher  onclick  window location  guru signup teacher php   name  login  class  btn btn-info  type  submit  gt Teacher lt  button gt               lt  div gt           lt  div gt               lt script type  text javascript  gt                    document  ready function                        signin student   tooltip  show        signin student   tooltip  hide                                     lt  script gt                  lt script type  text javascript  gt                    document  ready function                        signin teacher   tooltip  show        signin teacher   tooltip  hide                                     lt  script gt

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I use  Click  lt a nohref style  cursor pointer color blue text-decoration underline  onClick  alert  Hello World    gt HERE lt  a gt    A long way around but it gets the job done  use an A style to simplify then it becomes    lt style gt  A  cursor pointer color blue text-decoration underline     lt  style gt    lt a nohref onClick  alert  Hello World    gt HERE lt  a gt

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bad     lt a id  myLink  href  javascript MyFunction     gt link text lt  a gt    good     lt a id  myLink  href     onclick  MyFunction     gt link text lt  a gt    better     lt a id  myLink  href     onclick  MyFunction   return false   gt link text lt  a gt    even better 1     lt a id  myLink  title  Click to do something   href     onclick  MyFunction   return false   gt link text lt  a gt    even better 2     lt a id  myLink  title  Click to do something   href  PleaseEnableJavascript html  onclick  MyFunction   return false   gt link text lt  a gt    Why better  because return false will prevent browser from following the link  best    Use jQuery or other similar framework to attach onclick handler by element s ID       myLink   click function    MyFunction    return false

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First  having the url in href is best because it allows users to copy links  open in another tab  etc   In some cases  e g  sites with frequent HTML changes  it is not practical to bind links every time there is an update   Typical Bind Method  Normal link    lt a href  https   www google com   gt Google lt a  gt    And something like this for JS      a   click function  e        e preventDefault        var href     this  attr  href        window open href       return false        The benefits of this method are clean separation of markup and behavior and doesn t have to repeat the function calls in every link   No Bind Method  If you don t want to bind every time  however  you can use onclick and pass in the element and event  e g     lt a href  https   www google com   onclick  return Handler this  event    gt Google lt  a gt    And this for JS   function Handler self  e        e preventDefault        var href     self  attr  href        window open href       return false      The benefit to this method is that you can load in new links  e g  via AJAX  whenever you want without having to worry about binding every time

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Having javascript  in any attribute that isn t specifically for scripting is an outdated method of HTML   While technically it works  you re still assigning javascript properties to a non-script attribute  which isn t good practice   It can even fail on old browsers  or even some modern ones  a googled forum post seemd to indicate that Opera does not like  javascript   urls    A better practice would be the second way  to put your javascript into the onclick attribute  which is ignored if no scripting functionality is available   Place a valid URL in the href field  commonly      for fallback for those who do not have javascript

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it worked for me using this line of code     lt a id  LinkTest  title  Any Title   href     onclick  Function    return false    gt text lt  a gt

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One more thing that I noticed when using  href  with javascript   The script in  href  attribute won t be executed if the time difference between 2 clicks was quite short   For example  try to run following example and double click  fast   on each link  The first link will be executed only once  The second link will be executed twice     lt script gt  function myFunc         var s   0      for  var i 0  i lt 100000  i              s  i            console log s      lt  script gt   lt a href  javascript myFunc    gt href lt  a gt   lt a href     onclick  javascript myFunc    gt onclick lt  a gt    Reproduced in Chrome  double click  and IE11  with triple click   In Chrome if you click fast enough you can make 10 clicks and have only 1 function execution   Firefox works ok

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In addition to all here  the href is shown on browser s status bar  and onclick not  I think it s not user friendly to show javascript code there

[javascript] JavaScript function in href vs. onclick

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