I'm writing a Greasemonkey script, which redirects the user if there's only one search result to that one page. I'm trying to get the link from a table, which has many parent tables. That part of the page that I'm trying to get the link from looks like this:

<tr class="odd">
<td class="name first">
    <a href="need this one">Text</a>
</td>

Tried document.getElementById('name first'), but still no success. I need help without any external libraries. The page has a design of darkening the background of even cells, so if there's no class called 'even' then it assumes that there's only one result, and that part works correctly.

I'm writing a Greasemonkey script, which redirects the user if there's only one search result to that one page. I'm trying to get the link from a table, which has many parent tables. That part of the page that I'm trying to get the link from looks like this:

<tr class="odd">
<td class="name first">
    <a href="need this one">Text</a>
</td>

Tried document.getElementById('name first'), but still no success. I need help without any external libraries. The page has a design of darkening the background of even cells, so if there's no class called 'even' then it assumes that there's only one result, and that part works correctly.

• javascript
• html
• greasemonkey
• href

• 1 class != id Nathan's answer is a pretty reasonable solution. – Endophage Commented Mar 11, 2011 at 22:36
• Well, it is something wrong in my code, as the variable 'a' always returns undefined, can't even use the .getAttribute('href') with it. Actually, I tried window.location(a.getAttribute('href')), but I can't seem to understand what's wrong with it. – Exec Commented Mar 11, 2011 at 23:00
• Post the exact code you are using, in full. Nathan's answer is good for the question as stated. If you are trying to follow the link, You would use window.location.href = a.href; or window.location.replace (a.href);. – Brock Adams Commented Mar 12, 2011 at 1:46
• @Brock Adams: The code consists of a function, which checks the existence of class Even, from this question, and after declaring the function: if ( checkExistOfEven() == false ) { var td = document.getElementsByClassName('name first')[0]; var a = td.getElementsByTagName('a')[0] window.location.replace (a.href); The site for I'm trying to build the script is this – Exec Commented Mar 12, 2011 at 7:28

3 Answers 3

You are probably safe to use getElementsByClassName, as this is a Greasemonkey script and those browsers probably support it:

var td = document.getElementsByClassName('name first')[0];
var a = td.getElementsByTagName('a')[0];

Based on the target page and your apparent purpose (follow the first result link, if there are is only one search result), the code you want is this:

var EvenRow = document.querySelector ("table.listing tr.even");
if (EvenRow == null)
{
    var ResultLink  = document.querySelector ("table.listing tr.odd td.name.first a");
    if (ResultLink != null)
        window.location.href = ResultLink.href;
}

Notes:

1. There are multiple nodes with both the "name" and "first" classes. This is the reason for the more specific selector. It's also the reason why Nathan's answer failed (he ignored the tr.odd, for some reason).

2. A checkExistOfEven() function is not needed.

3. In this case, you probably want window.location.href = rather than window.location.replace(). The former preserves the search-results page in the history, in case there is some hiccup.

using document.querySelector is probably easier:

var a = document.querySelector("td.first.name a");