How to set href attribute at runtime?

Last Updated : 30 Jun, 2022

We know how to set the href attribute of the anchor tag int HTML, but sometimes we may require to set the href attribute at runtime i.e. for example, when a user provides us a url and we want to set it at runtime. We can do this with the help of jQuery.

Example 1: In this example, using jquery, we set the attr() method to the url entered by the user in the input tag, when user clicks the set href button.

html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
    <head>
        <meta charset="UTF-8" />
        <meta name="viewport"
              content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
        <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="ie=edge" />
        <script src=
"https://code.jquery.com/jquery-2.1.1.min.js">
        </script>
        <title>Set href attribute at runtime</title>
        <style>
            #btn {
                background-color: #4caf50;
                color: white;
            }
            input {
                color: #4caf50;
            }
            a {
                color: #4caf50;
            }
            h1 {
                color: green;
            }
        </style>
    </head>
    <body>
        <center>
            <h1>GeeksforGeeks</h1>
            <b>Set href attribute at runtime</b>
            <br>
            <input type="text" name="url" />
            <button id="btn">Set href</button>
            <button>
                <a id="click" href="#"
                   target="_blank">
                    link
                </a>
           </button>
        </center>
    </body>
 
    <script>
        $(document).ready(function () {
            $("#btn").click(function () {
                $("#click").attr("href", 
                $('input[name$="url"]').val());
            });
        });
    </script>
</html>

Output:

Example 2: In this example, we replace the anchor tag in the div ‘link’ with another anchor tag to change the href value. This is another way in which we can change the value of the href attribute.

html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
    <head>
        <meta charset="UTF-8" />
        <meta name="viewport"
              content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
        <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible"
                   content="ie=edge" />
        <script src=
"https://code.jquery.com/jquery-2.1.1.min.js">
        </script>
        <title>Set href attribute at runtime</title>
        <style>
            #btn {
                background-color: #4caf50;
                color: white;
            }
            input {
                color: #4caf50;
            }
            a {
                color: #4caf50;
            }
            h1 {
                color: green;
            }
        </style>
    </head>
    <body>
        <center>
            <h1>GeeksforGeeks</h1>
            <b>Set href attribute at runtime</b>
            <br>
            <div id="link">
                <a id="click" href=
"https://practice.geeksforgeeks.org/"
                     target="_blank">
                  https://practice.geeksforgeeks.org/
              </a>
              <button id="btn">Change url</button>
            </div>
        </center>
    </body>
 
    <script>
        $(document).ready(function () {
            $("#btn").click(function () {
                $("#link").html(
"<a href='https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/'>
       https://www.geeksforgeeks.org</a>");
  alert("Url changed to https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/");
            });
        });
    </script>
</html>