How to change onClick handler dynamically?

I'm sure there are a million posts about this out there, but surprisingly I'm having trouble finding something.

I have a simple script where I want to set the onClick handler for an <A> link on initialization of the page.

When I run this I immediately get a 'foo' alert box where I expected to only get an alert when I click on the link.

What stupid thing am I doing wrong? (I've tried click= and onClick=)...

<script language="javascript">

    function init(){

        document.getElementById("foo").click = new function() { alert('foo'); };
    }

</script>

<body onload="init()">
    <a id="foo" href=#>Click to run foo</a>
</body>

Edit: I changed my accepted answer to a jQuery answer. The answer by 'Már Örlygsson' is technically the correct answer to my original question (click should be onclick and new should be removed) but I strongly discourage anyone from using 'document.getElementById(...) directly in their code - and to use jQuery instead.

Try:

document.getElementById("foo").onclick = function (){alert('foo');};

Use .onclick (all lowercase). Like so:

document.getElementById("foo").onclick = function () {
  alert('foo'); // do your stuff
  return false; // <-- to suppress the default link behaviour
};

Actually, you'll probably find yourself way better off using some good library (I recommend jQuery for several reasons) to get you up and running, and writing clean javascript.

Cross-browser (in)compatibilities are a right hell to deal with for anyone - let alone someone who's just starting.

jQuery:

$('#foo').click(function() { alert('foo'); });

Or if you don't want it to follow the link href:

$('#foo').click(function() { alert('foo'); return false; });

I tried more or less all of the other solutions the other day, but none of them worked for me until I tried this one:

var submitButton = document.getElementById('submitButton');
submitButton.setAttribute('onclick',  'alert("hello");');

As far as I can tell, it works perfectly.

If you want to pass variables from the current function, another way to do this is, for example:

document.getElementById("space1").onclick = new Function("lrgWithInfo('"+myVar+"')");

If you don't need to pass information from this function, it's just:

document.getElementById("space1").onclick = new Function("lrgWithInfo('13')");

How to change onClick handler dynamically?

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