Disable anchor tag if href is Empty in ASP.NET

Question

I have an ASP.NET Menu which generates many anchor tags when rendered.
My requirements were

1. to prevent postback if href or an anchor tag is "" or "#".
2. to make the cursor not to show the hand

First I checked the markup of one of the generated anchor tags

    <a href="#" 
        class="popout level1 static" 
        tabindex="-1"  
        onclick="__doPostBack('ctl00$NavigationMenu','Unternehmen')">
        Company
    </a>

I saw an already bound click event and wrote a quick jquery snippet.

    $(document).ready(function () {
        $(".menu a").each(function () {
            var anchor = $(this);
            var url = (anchor.attr('href').length == 0) ? "" : anchor.attr('href').trim();
            if (url == "" || url == "#") {
                //unbind the __dopostback
                anchor.unbind('click');
                anchor.bind('click',function (e) {
                    e.preventDefault();
                });
                anchor.css("cursor", "default");
            }
        });
    });

When I hovered on the empty link, the cursor is showing the default one instead of hand, that means my anchor is recognized. But when I clicked the anchor, postback occurred!

Tried replacing anchor.unbind('click'); with anchor.kill('click');
Tried replacing e.preventDefault(); by appending e.stopPropogation and even return false;
Tried replacing anchor.bind('click', function(e){ with anchor.click(function(e) {

Nothing seems to work. What could be wrong with my code?

Answer 1

try using anchor.removeAttr("onclick"); in your code

Answer 2

How about looping through the anchors with an empty href or "#" href only.

$(".menu a[href='#'], .menu a[href='']").unbind('click').css("cursor", "default");

EDIT:

Seems .unbind will only unbind events that you have bound using the .bind method :/

.removeAttr is is :)

Answer 3

Instead of removing the event handler, why not explicitly replace it with something along the lines of:

anchor.click(function() { return false; });

Answer 4

Instead of removing eventhandler why not use this simple lines of code.

Actually I want to disable my link in view mode of page. It worked for me.

In Code-behind:

href.Attributes.Clear();
href.Disabled = true;

In source-code:

<a href="#" id="href" runat="server" onclick="Showpopup();" style="azimuth:left;" >Create New</a>