Tech Info - DOM-2 HTMLAnchorElement

W3C HTML Reference. Part of the HTML Interface

HTMLAnchorElement

The Anchor HTML element may be defined in HTML using <a></a>, or dynamically using the createElement method of a Node. An HTLAnchorElement is discovered when it returns the value "a" when a node's nodeName atrribute is inspected.

Usage

// create HTMLAnchorElement
anchor = document.createElement{"a");
// discover HTMLAnchorElement
if(somenode.nodeName == "a"){
  // now use HTMLAnchorElement methods and properties
  href = anchor.href;
}

Related Information

createElement, createTextNode methods

Methods and Attributes

W3C HTMLAnchorElement Reference. Also inherits the HTMLElement properties.

Examples

// get reference to existing anchor element
// defined as <a id="our-home" href="http://www.zytrax.com">home</a>
anchor = document.getElementById("home";
hs = anchor.href; // hs = "www.zytrax.com"
vs = anchor.childNodes[0].data;	// vs = "home"
is = anchor.childNodes[0].data;	// is = "our-home"

// create the above anchor dynamically
anchor = document.createElement("a");
anchor.href = "www.zytrax.com";
anchor.id = "our-home";
hometext = document.createTextNode("home");
anchor.appendChild(hometext);
// stick it onto an existing element
obj = document.getElementById("links");
obj.appendChild(anchor);

Notes:

The first fragment shows obtaining a reference to an anchor element defined statically in the HTML page, the second creates the same anchor using javascript DOM API methods and attributes and appends it to an existing object in the page with an id="links". This last fragment also illustrates how the 'clickable'/visible text is created for an anchor with the textnode.

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