How to set onClick with JavaScript?

If you're doing this with JavaScript, then use addEventListener(), with addEventListener('click', function(e) {...}) to get the event stored as e. If you don't pass in the event like this, it will not be accessible (although Chrome appears to be smart enough to figure this out, not all browsers are Chrome).

Full Working JSBin Demo.

StackOverflow Demo...

document.getElementById('my-link').addEventListener('click', function(e) {
  console.log('Click happened for: ' + e.target.id);
});

<a href="#" id="my-link">Link</a>

I have been unable to reproduce the problem. Contrary to the OP's findings, the line below works fine on the latest versions of IE, FF, Opera, Chrome and Safari.

link.onclick = function() {alert('clicked');};

You can visit this jsFiddle to test on your own browser:

http://jsfiddle.net/6MjgB/7/

Assuning we have this in the html page:

<div id="x"></div>

The following code works fine on the browsers I have tried it with:

var link = document.createElement('a');
link.appendChild(document.createTextNode("Hi"));
link.setAttribute('href', "#");
link.onclick= function() {link.appendChild(document.createTextNode("Clicked"));}

document.getElementById("x").appendChild(link);

If there is a browser compatibility issue, using jQuery should solve it and make code much much more concise:

var $link = $("<a>").html("Hi").attr("href","#").click(function (){$link.html("Clicked")})

$("#x").html($link)

If brevity is not a strong enough argument for using jQuery, browser compatibility should be ... and vise versa :-)

NOTE: I am not using alert() in the code because jsFiddle does not seem to like it :-(

You can add a DOM even listener with addEventListener(...), as David said. I've included attachEvent for compatibility with IE.

var link = document.createElement('a');
link.setAttribute('href', "#");
if(link.addEventListener){
   link.addEventListener('click', function(){
      alert('clicked');
   });
}else if(link.attachEvent){
   link.attachEvent('onclick', function(){
      alert('clicked');
   });
}