Question

<ul class="Buttons">
    <li><a href="#" onclick="myFunc(); return false;">Accept</a></li>
    <li><a href="#" onclick="myFunc(); return false;">Reject</a></li>
    <li><a href="#" onclick="myFunc(); return false;">On Hold</a></li>
    <li><a href="#" onclick="myFunc(); return false;">Completed</a></li>
</ul>

In my script.js:

var myFunc = function () {
    // I want to get the Text of the link e.g. if the first list item link is
    // clicked, store "Accept" in a variable.
};

How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

You could pass the current link as argument to the function:

<ul class="Buttons">
    <li><a href="#" onclick="myFunc(this); return false;">Accept</a></li>
    <li><a href="#" onclick="myFunc(this); return false;">Reject</a></li>
    <li><a href="#" onclick="myFunc(this); return false;">On Hold</a></li>
    <li><a href="#" onclick="myFunc(this); return false;">Completed</a></li>
</ul>

and then use the innerHTML property to fetch the text inside:

var myFunc = function (link) {
    alert(link.innerHTML);
};

---

UPDATE:

I haven’t noticed that actually your question is tagged with jQuery. In this case I would recommend you unobtrusively subscribing to the click handler:

<ul class="Buttons">
    <li><a href="#">Accept</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">Reject</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">On Hold</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">Completed</a></li>
</ul>

and in a separate js file:

$(function() {
    $('.Buttons a').click(function() {
        alert($(this).text());
        return false;
    });
});

---

UPDATE 2:

It was asked how to assign those click handlers if those anchors were dynamically generated. So let’s assume that you start with the following markup:

<ul class="Buttons"></ul>

and then when some event happens (click or something) you add an anchor dynamically:

$('<li/>', {
    html: $('<a/>', {
        href: '#',
        text: 'some text ....',
        click: myFunc
    })
}).appendTo('.Buttons');

where you have defined myFunc somewhere:

var myFunc = function() {
    alert($(this).text());
    return false;
}