Can I Pass the Text of a Link Through as a Variable?

Question

I have a simple html link.

<a onmouseover="myfunction(this.SOMETHING??);">The String I Want</a>

Is there any way to pass the text "The String I Want" as a variable into myfunction()? I was thinking I might be able to use the "this" keyword, so I checked here, but it didn't really address this issue.

furtive · Answer 1 · 2013-03-12T03:25:27.333

1

You can use this.textContentText:

<a onmouseover="myfunction(this.textContent);">The String I Want</a>

But it works in everything except IE.

innerText only works with IE:

<a onmouseover="myfunction(this.innerText);">The String I Want</a>

As suggested by others, try this:

<a onmouseover="myfunction(this.innerText || this.textContent || '');">The String I Want</a>

This will use whichever one works, but in the event that innerText is empty and textContent is unsupported it will still pass an empty string instead of undefined.

edited Mar 12 '13 at 03:25

answered Mar 12 '13 at 03:09

furtive

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`innerText` is unavailable in (at least) Firefox; `textContent`, however, works. – icktoofay Mar 12 '13 at 03:10
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Something like `The String I Want` should be more appropriate. – techfoobar Mar 12 '13 at 03:12
@Jack - Yes totally. Old practices die hard. :-) – techfoobar Mar 12 '13 at 03:13
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@Jack: Except that that will make the argument be `undefined` when `innerText` is empty and `textContent` is unsupported. `this.innerText || this.textContent || ""` would work, though. – icktoofay Mar 12 '13 at 03:14

Can I Pass the Text of a Link Through as a Variable?

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