How do I bind a click to an anchor without a framework (javascript)

Question

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?

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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) {
  // ...
});