How to prevent default event handling in an onclick method?

Question

How to prevent default in an onclick method? I have a method in which I am also passing a custom value

<a href="#" onclick="callmymethod(24)">Call</a> 

function callmymethod(myVal){     //doing custom things with myVal     //here I want to prevent default } 

Answer 1

Let your callback return false and pass that on to the onclick handler:

<a href="#" onclick="return callmymethod(24)">Call</a>  function callmymethod(myVal){     //doing custom things with myVal     //here I want to prevent default     return false; } 

---

To create maintainable code, however, you should abstain from using "inline Javascript" (i.e.: code that's directly within an element's tag) and modify an element's behavior via an included Javascript source file (it's called unobtrusive Javascript).

The mark-up:

<a href="#" id="myAnchor">Call</a> 

The code (separate file):

// Code example using Prototype JS API $('myAnchor').observe('click', function(event) {     Event.stop(event); // suppress default click behavior, cancel the event     /* your onclick code goes here */ }); 

Answer 2

In my opinion the answer is wrong! He asked for event.preventDefault(); when you simply return false; it calls event.preventDefault(); AND event.stopPropagation(); as well!

You can solve it by this:

<a href="#" onclick="callmymethod(event, 24)">Call</a> 

function callmymethod(e, myVal){     //doing custom things with myVal      //here I want to prevent default     e = e || window.event;     e.preventDefault(); }