How to Disable a Href Link in JavaScript

How do I disable a href link in JavaScript?

Try this when you dont want user to redirect on click

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

Disabled href tag

There is no disabled attribute for hyperlinks. If you don't want something to be linked then you'll need to remove the <a> tag altogether.

Alternatively you can remove its href attribute - though this has other UX and Accessibility issues as noted in the comments below so is not recommended.

How to disable or enable href links and change the contents of it?

On the server side, it would be an obvious place to not show a link

EJS

<p class="vocab paragraph inherit-colored info__content info__content-creator">
  <% if (creatorUrl) { %>
    <a href="<%= creatorUrl %>">Creator Name</a>
  <% } else { %>
    Creator Name
  <% } %>
</p>

On the client side you can do this to replace empty links with their textContent

window.addEventListener("load",function() {  [...document.querySelectorAll(".info__content-creator a[href^='#']")].forEach(lnk => lnk.parentNode.replaceChild(document.createTextNode(lnk.textContent), lnk));})

<p class="vocab paragraph inherit-colored info__content info__content-creator">  <a href="#">Creator Name</a></p>
<p class="vocab paragraph inherit-colored info__content info__content-creator">  <a href="createorpage.html">Creator Name</a></p>

How can I disable HREF if onclick is executed?

You can use the first un-edited solution, if you put return first in the onclick attribute:

<a href="https://example.com/no-js-login" onclick="return yes_js_login();">Log in</a>

yes_js_login = function() {
     // Your code here
     return false;
}

Example: https://jsfiddle.net/FXkgV/289/

Disable href of HTML using javascript

I think you can do something like: jsFiddle

HTML:

<table>
    <thead>
        <tr>
            <th>Name</th>
            <th>Age</th>
            <th>Address</th>
            <th>Button</th>
        </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
        <tr>
            <td>Mr.XX</td>
            <td>
                <input id="ageInput" type="text" value="20" />
            </td>
            <td>Street XX</td>
            <td><a name="sendName" id="sendId" href="#">Clik Here</a>
            </td>
        </tr>
    </tbody>
</table>

JS:

$(document).ready(function () {
    $('#ageInput').keyup(function (e) {
        var age = $(this).val();
        if (age != 20) {
            // anything what should happend if its not 20 f.e.:
            $('#sendId').hide();
        } else {
            // anything what should happend if it is 20 f.e.:
            $('#sendId').show();
        }
    });
});

How to disable HTML links

You can't disable a link (in a portable way). You can use one of these techniques (each one with its own benefits and disadvantages).

CSS way

This should be the right way (but see later) to do it when most of browsers will support it:

a.disabled {
    pointer-events: none;
}

It's what, for example, Bootstrap 3.x does. Currently (2016) it's well supported only by Chrome, FireFox and Opera (19+). Internet Explorer started to support this from version 11 but not for links however it's available in an outer element like:

span.disable-links {
    pointer-events: none;
}

With:

<span class="disable-links"><a href="#">...</a></span>

Workaround

We, probably, need to define a CSS class for pointer-events: none but what if we reuse the disabled attribute instead of a CSS class? Strictly speaking disabled is not supported for <a> but browsers won't complain for unknown attributes. Using the disabled attribute IE will ignore pointer-events but it will honor IE specific disabled attribute; other CSS compliant browsers will ignore unknown disabled attribute and honor pointer-events. Easier to write than to explain:

a[disabled] {
    pointer-events: none;
}

Another option for IE 11 is to set display of link elements to block or inline-block:

<a style="pointer-events: none; display: inline-block;" href="#">...</a>

Note that this may be a portable solution if you need to support IE (and you can change your HTML) but...

All this said please note that pointer-events disables only...pointer events. Links will still be navigable through keyboard then you also need to apply one of the other techniques described here.

Focus

In conjunction with above described CSS technique you may use tabindex in a non-standard way to prevent an element to be focused:

<a href="#" disabled tabindex="-1">...</a>

I never checked its compatibility with many browsers then you may want to test it by yourself before using this. It has the advantage to work without JavaScript. Unfortunately (but obviously) tabindex cannot be changed from CSS.

Intercept clicks

Use a href to a JavaScript function, check for the condition (or the disabled attribute itself) and do nothing in case.

$("td > a").on("click", function(event){
    if ($(this).is("[disabled]")) {
        event.preventDefault();
    }
});

To disable links do this:

$("td > a").attr("disabled", "disabled");

To re-enable them:

$("td > a").removeAttr("disabled");

If you want instead of .is("[disabled]") you may use .attr("disabled") != undefined (jQuery 1.6+ will always return undefined when the attribute is not set) but is() is much more clear (thanks to Dave Stewart for this tip). Please note here I'm using the disabled attribute in a non-standard way, if you care about this then replace attribute with a class and replace .is("[disabled]") with .hasClass("disabled") (adding and removing with addClass() and removeClass()).

Zoltán Tamási noted in a comment that "in some cases the click event is already bound to some "real" function (for example using knockoutjs) In that case the event handler ordering can cause some troubles. Hence I implemented disabled links by binding a return false handler to the link's touchstart, mousedown and keydown events. It has some drawbacks (it will prevent touch scrolling started on the link)" but handling keyboard events also has the benefit to prevent keyboard navigation.

Note that if href isn't cleared it's possible for the user to manually visit that page.

Clear the link

Clear the href attribute. With this code you do not add an event handler but you change the link itself. Use this code to disable links:

$("td > a").each(function() {
    this.data("href", this.attr("href"))
        .attr("href", "javascript:void(0)")
        .attr("disabled", "disabled");
});

And this one to re-enable them:

$("td > a").each(function() {
    this.attr("href", this.data("href")).removeAttr("disabled");
});

Personally I do not like this solution very much (if you do not have to do more with disabled links) but it may be more compatible because of various way to follow a link.

Fake click handler

Add/remove an onclick function where you return false, link won't be followed. To disable links:

$("td > a").attr("disabled", "disabled").on("click", function() {
    return false; 
});

To re-enable them:

$("td > a").removeAttr("disabled").off("click");

I do not think there is a reason to prefer this solution instead of the first one.

Styling

Styling is even more simple, whatever solution you're using to disable the link we did add a disabled attribute so you can use following CSS rule:

a[disabled] {
    color: gray;
}

If you're using a class instead of attribute:

a.disabled {
    color: gray;
}

If you're using an UI framework you may see that disabled links aren't styled properly. Bootstrap 3.x, for example, handles this scenario and button is correctly styled both with disabled attribute and with .disabled class. If, instead, you're clearing the link (or using one of the others JavaScript techniques) you must also handle styling because an <a> without href is still painted as enabled.

Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA)

Do not forget to also include an attribute aria-disabled="true" together with disabled attribute/class.

Disabling href link click if {{permission}}

Hyperlinks don't support the disabled attribute. But you could create a CSS class that essentially does the same thing, like:

.disabled {
    cursor: not-allowed;
}

And then apply that class to the element conditionally:

<a ng-class="{disabled: notAllowed}">Link</a>

notAllowed is the expression that evaluates to true or false depending on if the user has permission or not.

You might also want to add a function that fires if the link is clicked, preventing the default action. You can then and add it to the element using the ng-click attribute:

<a ng-class="{disabled: notAllowed}" ng-click="stopClick($event)">Link</a>

$scope.stopClick = function($event) {
    if ($scope.notAllowed) {
        $event.preventDefault();
    }
}

Of course, this can easily be disabled by the user since it's client-side. But that's true with any JavaScript.

How do I disable a link with javascript and css?

To stop the link from taking its default action add return false; to the onclick event:

<div class="searchoffertext" onclick="searchoffertext_selected('Banana'); return false;"><a href="./search/Banana">Banana</a></div>

It's probably a better idea to put the onclick directly on the <a>

But an even better approach would be to use unobtrusive JavaScript to attach an event to the link via a selector.

See also: Stackoverflow: When to use onclick in HTML?

How to disable href after one click

I ended up disabling the href after one click using the following javascript function:

function check(link) {
if (link.className != "visited") {
   //alert("new");
   link.className = "visited";
   return true;    
}
//alert("old");
return false;

}