Wrapping HTML table rows in <a> tags

Question

Is it possible to wrap entire table rows in <a> tags? I want the the entire row to be a clickable link.

If I try the following, the links get rendered above and outside the table:

This:

<table>
<a href="value_url"><tr><td>value</td><td>value</td></tr></a>
<a href="value_url"><tr><td>value</td><td>value</td></tr></a>
</table>

Renders like this:

<a href="value_url"></a>
<a href="value_url"></a>
<table>
<tr><td>value</td><td>value</td></tr>
<tr><td>value</td><td>value</td></tr>
</table>

Answer 1

Edit 2021:
It seems nowadays there's better options that are more semantic and more screen-reader-friendly. Check out e.g. Jans solution.

Original answer:
as a link in each td is not a good alternative and using js is a bit dirty, here is another html/css approach:

HTML:

<div class="table">     <a class="table-row" href="/mylink">         <div class="table-cell">...</div>         <div class="table-cell">...</div>         <div class="table-cell">...</div>     </a> </div> 

CSS:

.table { display:table; } .table-row { display:table-row; } .table-cell { display:table-cell; } 

Answer 2

It renders like that because the browser is respecting the W3C specification and only allowing <tr> tags as direct descendents of <table>.

As a solution, you could either put an <a> tag inside each <td> that points to the same URL:

<table>
    <tr>
        <td>
            <a href="http://url/stuff">
                First column
            </a>
        </td>
        <td>
            <a href="http://url/stuff">
                Second column
            </a>
        </td>
    </tr>
</table>

Or you could bind an onClick handler to the <tr> with JavaScript. A jQuery example would be this:

$('table tr').click(function() {
    window.location = 'http://location/here';
});

Or, even better, use delegated events (jQuery 1.7+):

$('table').on('click', 'tr', function() {
    window.location = 'http://location/here';
});

Answer 3

Another simple, CSS only solution is turning <a> into block elements

<tr>
  <td><a href="#">name 1</a></td><td><a href="#">link 1</a></td>    
</tr>
<tr>
  <td><a href="#">name 2</a></td><td><a href="#">link 2</a></td>    
</tr>

The CSS would be:

td > a {
  display: block;
}

Then the <a> would take up the entire <td>, and making entire row clickable without JS if the link is repeated for each cell in a row.

https://jsfiddle.net/evwa451n/