Question

How can I check if an anchor tag is empty with PHP or preg_match or JQuery? For example if an achor tag looks like: <a href="some_url"></a> I want to skip over it.

I am trying to add database functionality to Superfish menu but in Google Chrome I get empty anchor tags in the sub-menus. In all other browsers it works fine.

I can’t figure out what the problem is so I thought if I could not output empty anchors it might work.

Can you help?

Thank you!

<?php
//---------------------------------------------------------------
// INCLUDE DB CONNECTION
//---------------------------------------------------------------
require_once(ROOT_PATH.'connections/mysql.php');
require_once(ROOT_PATH.'controls/menu/error_messages.php');

//---------------------------------------------------------------
// GET MENU FROM DB
//---------------------------------------------------------------
$get_menu = mysqli_query($conn, "SELECT MenuId, Url, Target, Label, Title, Description, ParentId, OrdinalPosition, IsEnabled FROM menu WHERE (IsEnabled = 1) ORDER BY ParentId, OrdinalPosition, Label")
or die($dataaccess_error);

if(mysqli_num_rows($get_menu) > 0)
{
    // loop through menu items
    while ($menu_item = mysqli_fetch_assoc($get_menu))
    {
        $menu_data['MenuItem'][$menu_item['MenuId']] = $menu_item;
        $menu_data['MenuParent'][$menu_item['ParentId']][] = $menu_item['MenuId'];
    } 
}
else
{
    echo $no_menu_items_error;
}

//---------------------------------------------------------------
// BUILD MENU FUNCTION FOR SUPERFISH
//---------------------------------------------------------------
function HorizMenu($parent_id, $menu_data)
{
    $html = '';

    if (isset($menu_data['MenuParent'][$parent_id]))
    {
        $html = '<ul class="sf-menu">';
        foreach ($menu_data['MenuParent'][$parent_id] as $itemId)
        {
            // menu variables
            $url = $menu_data['MenuItem'][$itemId]['Url'];
            $target = $menu_data['MenuItem'][$itemId]['Target'];
            $title = $menu_data['MenuItem'][$itemId]['Title'];
            $label = $menu_data['MenuItem'][$itemId]['Label'];

            $html .= '<li class="current"><a href="'.$url.'" target="'.$target.'" title="'.$title.'">'.$label;

            // find childitems recursively
            $html .= HorizMenu($itemId, $menu_data);

            $html .= '</a></li>';
        }
        $html .= '</ul>';
    }

    return $html;
}

// output the menu
echo HorizMenu(0, $menu_data); 
?>

Answer 1

This is something that should be taken care of with JavaScript (JQuery). You can use JQuery’s “each” method as follows:

$('a').each(function(index) {
   if( $(this).attr('href') == [something] ) {
      //Do Something
   }
});