How to add click event to an element?

Question

I would like to add a click event in plain JavaScript (without using jQuery) to an element like this, so I don't have an id but a class:

<a href="http://example.com/share" class="MyClass">Yummy</a>

Answer 1

If you don't have an id and don't have any selector library and you want it to work in older browsers, then it takes a bit more work. If you can put an id on it, it's quite simple. If not, it takes more code:

var links = document.getElementsByClassName("MyClass");
links[0].onclick = function() {
    // put your click handling code here
    // return(false) if you don't want default click behavior for the link
}

Since getElementsByClassName is not universally available in older browsers, you would need a shim to implement it when not present. Or, you could get all the links in your document with:

var links = document.getElementsByTagName("a");

and then cycle through that list until you find the one you want (perhaps checking the class name).

If you can put an ID on the link:

<a href="http://braza.com/share" id="specialLink" class="MyClass" >Yummy</a>

Then, it just takes this code:

document.getElementById("specialLink").onclick = function() {
    // add code here
}

If you're going to do this regularly, the adding an event listener is a little more extensible than using the onclick property, but if you don't have any framework, then you need a function for adding an event listener that handles older versions of IE.