Vanilla JavaScript version of jQuery .click

Question

So maybe I'm just not looking in the right places but I can't find a good explanation of how to do the equivalent of jQuery's

$('a').click(function(){
    // code here
});

in plain old JavaScript?

Basically I want to run a function every time an a tag is clicked but I don't have the ability to load jQuery into the page to do it in the way above so I need to know how to do it using plain JavaScript.

Answer 1

Working Example: http://jsfiddle.net/6ZNws/

Html

<a href="something">CLick Here</a>
<a href="something">CLick Here</a>
<a href="something">CLick Here</a>

Javascript:

var anchors = document.getElementsByTagName('a');
for(var z = 0; z < anchors.length; z++) {
    var elem = anchors[z];   
    elem.onclick = function() {
        alert("hello");
        return false;
    };
}

Answer 2

element.addEventListener('click', function() { ... }, false);

You have to locate the elements and make a loop to hook up each one.

Answer 3

Try the following

var clickHandler = function() { 
  // Your click handler
};

var anchors = document.getElementsByTagName("a");
for (var i = 0; i < anchors.length; i++) {
  var current = anchors[i];
  current.addEventListener('click', clickHandler, false);
}

Note: As Ӫ_._Ӫ pointed out this will not work on IE8 and lower as it doesn't support addEventListener.

On IE8 you could use the following to subscribe to onclick. It's not a perfect substitute as it requires everyone to be cooperative but it may be able to help you out

var subscribeToOnClick = function(element) {
  if (element.onclick === undefined) {
    element.onclick = clickHandler;
  } else {
    var saved = element.onclick;
    element.onclick = function() {
      saved.apply(this, arguments);
      clickHandler.apply(this, arguments);
    }
  }
}

for (var i = 0; i < anchors.length; i++) {
  var current = anchors[i];
  subscribeToOnClick(current);
}

Answer 4

document.getElementById('elementID').onclick = function(){
      //click me function!
}

Answer 5

Here you go:

[].forEach.call( document.querySelectorAll( 'a' ), function ( a ) {
    a.addEventListener( 'click', function () {
        // code here
    }, false );
});

Live demo: http://jsfiddle.net/8Lvzc/3/

(doesn't work in IE8)

Also, I recommend event delegation...

Answer 6

This will assign an onclick function to every a element.

var links = document.getElementsByTagName("a");
var linkClick = function() {
  //code here
};

for(var i = 0; i < links.length; i++){
  links[i].onclick = linkClick;
}

You can see it in action here.