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Asked: 2026-05-10T18:35:13+00:00

I’m sure there are a million posts about this out there, but surprisingly I’m

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I’m sure there are a million posts about this out there, but surprisingly I’m having trouble finding something.

I have a simple script where I want to set the onClick handler for an <A> link on initialization of the page.

When I run this I immediately get a ‘foo’ alert box where I expected to only get an alert when I click on the link.

What stupid thing am I doing wrong? (I’ve tried click= and onClick=)…

<script language='javascript'>      function init(){          document.getElementById('foo').click = new function() { alert('foo'); };     }  </script>  <body onload='init()'>     <a id='foo' href=#>Click to run foo</a> </body>

Edit: I changed my accepted answer to a jQuery answer. The answer by ‘Már Örlygsson‘ is technically the correct answer to my original question (click should be onclick and new should be removed) but I strongly discourage anyone from using ‘document.getElementById(…) directly in their code – and to use jQuery instead.

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1 Answer

  1. jQuery:

    $('#foo').click(function() { alert('foo'); });

    Or if you don’t want it to follow the link href:

    $('#foo').click(function() { alert('foo'); return false; });
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