JavaScript: changing the value of onclick with or without jQuery

avernet picture avernet · May 5, 2009 · Viewed 164.8k times · Source

I'd like to change the value of the onclick attribute on an anchor. I want to set it to a new string that contains JavaScript. (That string is provided to the client-side JavaScript code by the server, and it can contains whatever you can put in the onclick attribute in HTML.) Here are a few things I tried:

  • Using jQuery attr("onclick", js) doesn't work with both Firefox and IE6/7.
  • Using setAttribute("onclick", js) works with Firefox and IE8, but not IE6/7.
  • Using onclick = function() { return eval(js); } doesn't work because you are not allowed to use return is code passed to eval().

Anyone has a suggestion on to set the onclick attribute to to make this work for Firefox and IE 6/7/8? Also see below the code I used to test this.

<html>
    <head>
        <script type="text/javascript"
                src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript">
            $(document).ready(function(){
                var js = "alert('B'); return false;";
                // Set with JQuery: doesn't work
                $("a").attr("onclick", js);
                // Set with setAttribute(): at least works with Firefox
                //document.getElementById("anchor").setAttribute("onclick", js);
            });
        </script>
    </head>
    <body>
        <a href="http://www.google.com/" id="anchor" onclick="alert('A'); return false;">Click</a>
    </body>
</html>

Answer

gnarf picture gnarf · May 5, 2009

You shouldn't be using onClick any more if you are using jQuery. jQuery provides its own methods of attaching and binding events. See .click()

$(document).ready(function(){
    var js = "alert('B:' + this.id); return false;";
    // create a function from the "js" string
    var newclick = new Function(js);

    // clears onclick then sets click using jQuery
    $("#anchor").attr('onclick', '').click(newclick);
});

That should cancel the onClick function - and keep your "javascript from a string" as well.

The best thing to do would be to remove the onclick="" from the <a> element in the HTML code and switch to using the Unobtrusive method of binding an event to click.

You also said:

Using onclick = function() { return eval(js); } doesn't work because you are not allowed to use return in code passed to eval().

No - it won't, but onclick = eval("(function(){"+js+"})"); will wrap the 'js' variable in a function enclosure. onclick = new Function(js); works as well and is a little cleaner to read. (note the capital F) -- see documentation on Function() constructors