How to Find All Non-Navigating Links on a Page Using JavaScript

Discover how to effectively identify and filter out `non-navigating links` on a webpage using JavaScript. This guide provides solutions with examples and explanations for better understanding.
---

Visit these links for original content and any more details, such as alternate solutions, latest updates/developments on topic, comments, revision history etc. For example, the original title of the Question was: Find all non-navigating links on a page using javascript

If anything seems off to you, please feel free to write me at vlogize [AT] gmail [DOT] com.
---
Finding All Non-Navigating Links on a Page Using JavaScript

When working on web projects, you may encounter situations where you need to handle links effectively. One common requirement is to find all links on a webpage while excluding non-navigating ones. Non-navigating links are links that do not lead to new pages or content, which can often interfere with behaviors like event handling. In this guide, we will explore how to identify these links using JavaScript and exclude them from your operations.

The Problem

When you want to interact with links on a webpage, it’s important to differentiate between navigable and non-navigable links. Non-navigable links include scenarios such as:

<a> (an anchor tag without an href attribute)

<a href=""> (an anchor tag with an empty href)

<a href="# "> (an anchor tag with a hash, commonly used for in-page navigation)

<a href="# " onclick="return false;"> (an anchor tag that prevents navigation through JavaScript)

<a href="javascript:void(0)"> (an anchor tag that does not lead anywhere)

<a href="javascript:{}"> (similar to the above, not leading to a valid page)

<a href="# 0"> (again, an anchor that doesn’t lead to new content)

The Existing Code Issue

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

This method successfully retrieves all links but does not filter out the non-navigating scenarios effectively.

The Optimized Solution

To efficiently find and handle only the navigable links, we can use a more streamlined approach with CSS selectors. This is how you can achieve it:

Using CSS Selectors with Query Selector

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Explanation of the Code

[href]:not([href^="# "]):not([href^="javascript"]):not([href=""]): This selector filters out:

Links that start with #

Links that start with javascript:

Empty href attributes

By using this method, you ensure that your code only interacts with links that lead to valid navigation, making your web application more robust and user-friendly.

Conclusion

Identifying and filtering out non-navigating links is crucial for creating effective web applications. By utilizing CSS selectors combined with JavaScript, you can efficiently handle links and ensure you only attach events to those that will lead to real content. This not only improves performance but also enhances user experience by preventing unnecessary actions on non-navigable links.

With the solution provided, you can now confidently handle link events in your web projects while excluding irrelevant links.

Feel free to implement this in your own projects for cleaner, more maintainable code!