onclick event function in JavaScript

Nate Koppenhaver picture Nate Koppenhaver · Mar 28, 2011 · Viewed 320.6k times · Source

I have some JavaScript code in an HTML page with a button. I have a function called click() that handles the onClick event of the button. The code for the button is as follows:

<input type="button" onClick="click()">button text</input>  

The problem is that when the button is clicked, the function is not called. What am I doing wrong here?

Answer

Elian Ebbing picture Elian Ebbing · Mar 28, 2011

Two observations:

  1. You should write

    <input type="button" value="button text" />
    

    instead of

    <input type="button">button text</input>
    
  2. You should rename your function. The function click() is already defined on a button (it simulates a click), and gets a higher priority then your method.

Note that there are a couple of suggestions here that are plain wrong, and you shouldn't spend to much time on them:

  • Do not use onclick="javascript:myfunc()". Only use the javascript: prefix inside the href attribute of a hyperlink: <a href="javascript:myfunc()">.
  • You don't have to end with a semicolon. onclick="foo()" and onclick="foo();" both work just fine.
  • Event attributes in HTML are not case sensitive, so onclick, onClick and ONCLICK all work. It is common practice to write attributes in lowercase: onclick. note that javascript itself is case sensitive, so if you write document.getElementById("...").onclick = ..., then it must be all lowercase.