JavaScript get href onclick

Question

I am trying to return the href attribute of a link using JavaScript when the user clicks on it. I want the URL the link is linking to displayed in an alert instead of loading the page.

I have the following code so far:

function doalert(){
    alert(document.getElementById("link").getAttribute("href"));
    return false;
}

With the following markup:

<a href="http://www.example.com/" id="link" onclick="return doalert()">Link</a>

For some reason, no alert is ever displayed and the page loads instead. Does anyone know why this is?

Using jQuery is not an option in this case.

Answer 1

Seems to be the order of your code, try this

<script>
    function doalert(obj) {
        alert(obj.getAttribute("href"));
        return false;
    }
</script>
<a href="http://www.example.com/" id="link" onclick="doalert(this); return false;">Link</a>

http://jsfiddle.net/YZ8yV/

http://jsfiddle.net/YZ8yV/2/