document.getElementById as a variable in xhtml

I am trying to insert some new links using ‘innerHTML’. As there may be a number of calls on the same ‘ids’ I thought it would be wise to use variables. The following does not respond beyond the alert? The process works fine if I don’t use ‘var link’ and just enter it in full. Is there an issue perhaps trying to do this with xhtml?

Thanks.

var newlink = '<a title="new link" href="newlink.htm">New Link</a>';
var link = "document.getElementById('idlink')";

if( link ) {
alert("link confirmed");
link.innerHTML = newlink;
}

document.getElementById() is a Javascript command and will not work if put into quotes. Just omit the string delimiter quotes around this command!

Thanks devnull69.

I started without the quotes, but then I'm not even getting as far as a response to the alert?

Post full code.

Maybe the HTML tag with id 'idlink' does not exist in your file.

Post the full code so we can help.

Thanks ckeyrouz.

This was more or less the problem. I was assigning the 'var link' in the head of the document. If I assign it further down the page after the element it works fine.

Presumably if I put the variable in an external.js this will also have to be loaded after the element?

Yes, you should assign your variable and your code after the load of the page.

You can put either after the element or in a window.onload in an external js file like this:


window.onload = function() {
var newlink = '<a title="new link" href="newlink.htm">New Link</a>';
var link = "document.getElementById('idlink')";

if( link ) {
alert("link confirmed");
link.innerHTML = newlink;
}
}

Thank you.