CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascripttabs
whatamidoingwithmylife
whatamidoingwithmylife

Reputation: 1186

Get reference to a tab opened by click event on <a>

Can we get a reference to a tab which was opened by setting target attribute of anchor element to _blank.

I basically create a new hidden link and append it to a DOM and then I programmatically simulate click event on that element, is there a way to get a reference to a newly opened tab like we can with window.open by doing:

var newTab = window.open('http://www.google.com/');

EDIT: Before marking question as duplicate note that I'm unable to use window.open at all, hence this question.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1918

Answers (2)

Stefan Blamberg
Stefan Blamberg

Reputation: 844

If you can't use code directly inside the anchor, you could try to get the reference afterwards (doesn't work in IE). However you need to set a different target than _blank, it will still open a new tab though.

1) Define a target name for your anchor

<a href="https://google.com" target="myTarget">Click me</a>

2) Get the reference with this "hack":

var ref = window.open('', 'myTarget');

For more information, see https://medium.com/@bluepnume/every-known-way-to-get-references-to-windows-in-javascript-223778bede2d

Upvotes: 2

Andrews Gyamfi
Andrews Gyamfi

Reputation: 144

There are a few red flags worth considering for the functionality you seek to build before you proceed:

  1. You do not have much control (as a developer) to force new links to be opened in browser tabs. That's based on the user's preference as per this answer

  2. window.open docs indicates it returns a null value "If the window couldn't be opened". You can use this to loosely check whether a new window was opened or not. However, this might not be consistent across the different browsers.

I will suggest you look at other options (if any) before going down this path.

All the best :)

Upvotes: 0

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