CODEWITHSUNDEEP
htmlhyperlinkstandardsanchor
john
john

Reputation: 2673

Is an anchor tag without the href attribute safe?

Is it okay to use an anchor tag without including the href attribute, and instead using a JavaScript click event handler? So I would omit the href completely, not even have it empty (href="").

Upvotes: 264

Views: 175481

Answers (9)

Quentin
Quentin

Reputation: 943108

Short answer: No.

Long answer:

First, without an href attribute, it will not be a link. If it isn't a link then it wont be keyboard (or breath switch, or various other not pointer based input device) accessible (unless you use HTML 5 features of tabindex which are not universally supported). It is very rare that it is appropriate for a control to not have keyboard access.

Second. You should have an alternative for when the JavaScript does not run (because it was slow to load from the server, an Internet connection was dropped (e.g. mobile signal on a moving train), JS is turned off, etc, etc).

Make use of progressive enhancement by unobtrusive JS.

Upvotes: 25

user3862605
user3862605

Reputation: 379

From an accessibility perspective <a> without a href is not tab-able, all links should be tab-able so add a tabindex="0" if you don't have a href.

Upvotes: 11

Md Sajedul Islam
Md Sajedul Islam

Reputation: 2871

Just add bellows code in your working component on top to remove this warning, that's it.

/* eslint-disable jsx-a11y/anchor-is-valid */

Upvotes: 0

Gunnar Hoffman
Gunnar Hoffman

Reputation: 1226

My advice is use <a href="#"></a>

If you're using JQuery remember to also use:

.click(function(event){
    event.preventDefault();
    // Click code here...
});

Upvotes: 37

shashwat13
shashwat13

Reputation: 108

In some browsers you will face problems if you are not giving an href attribute. I suggest you to write your code something like this:

<a href="#" onclick="yourcode();return false;">Link</a>

you can replace yourcode() with your own function or logic,but do remember to add return false; statement at the end.

Upvotes: 2

Rasive
Rasive

Reputation: 1143

If you have to use href for backwards compability, you can also use

<a href="javascript:void(0)">link</a>

instead of # ,if you don't want to use the attribute

Upvotes: 32

dthrasher
dthrasher

Reputation: 41772

In HTML5, using an a element without an href attribute is valid. It is considered to be a "placeholder hyperlink."

Example:

<a>previous</a>

Look for "placeholder hyperlink" on the w3c anchor tag reference page: https://www.w3.org/TR/2016/REC-html51-20161101/textlevel-semantics.html#the-a-element.

And it is also mentioned on the wiki here: https://www.w3.org/wiki/Elements/a

A placeholder link is for cases where you want to use an anchor element, but not have it navigate anywhere. This comes in handy for marking up the current page in a navigation menu or breadcrumb trail. (The old approach would have been to either use a span tag or an anchor tag with a class named "active" or "current" to style it and JavaScript to cancel navigation.)

A placeholder link is also useful in cases where you want to dynamically set the destination of the link via JavaScript at runtime. You simply set the value of the href attribute, and the anchor tag becomes clickable.

See also:

Upvotes: 245

monokrome
monokrome

Reputation: 1375

The tag is fine to use without an href attribute. Contrary to many of the answers here, there are actually standard reasons for creating an anchor when there is no href. Semantically, "a" means an anchor or a link. If you use it for anything following that meaning, then you are fine.

One standard use of the a tag without an href is to create named links. This allows you to use an anchor with name=blah and later on you can create an anchor with href=#blah to link to the named section of the current page. However, this has been deprecated because you can also use IDs in the same manner. As an example, you could use a header tag with id=header and later you could have an anchor pointing to href=#header.

My point, however, is not to suggest using the name property. Only to provide one use case where you don't need an href, and therefore reasoning why it is not required.

Upvotes: 13

Jon
Jon

Reputation: 81

The <a> tag without the "href" can be handy when using multi-level menus and you need to expand the next level but don't want that menu label to be an active link. I have never had any issues using it that way.

Upvotes: 8

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