Are you allowed to nest a link inside of a link? - html

Question

This may seem pretty basic, are you allowed to put a link inside of a link? See attached image below:
I'm trying to have the whole grey bar clickable to go somewhere, but if the user clicks the wheel or the move arrow, they are other links. See my current code:
<a href="#" class="sp_mngt_bar">
<h1><?php echo $v; ?></h1>
</a>
Is this a good practice? Am I doing it wrong? How would you do this?
Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

Straight from the W3C for HTML4:
12.2.2 Nested links are illegal
Links and anchors defined by the A element must not be nested; an A element must not contain any other A elements.
Since the DTD defines the LINK element to be empty, LINK elements may not be nested either.
HTML 5
And for HTML5 it is a little different.
You cannot have Interactive Content inside an A element. Interactive Content includes anchor tags.

Answer 2

To simply answer the question: No.
That being said, here's a pure html/css workaround:
https://codepen.io/pwkip/pen/oGMZjb
.block {
position:relative;
}
.block .overlay {
position:absolute;
left:0; top:0; bottom:0; right:0;
}
.block .inner {
position:relative;
pointer-events: none;
z-index: 1;
}
.block .inner a {
pointer-events: all;
}
<div class="block">
<a class="overlay" href="#overlay-link"></a>
<div class="inner">
This entire box is a hyperlink. (Kind of)<br><br><br><br>
I'm a W3C compliant hyperlink inside that box
</div>
</div>

Answer 3

Wrap your nested link inside an object tag :
<a href="#" class="sp_mngt_bar">
<h1><?php echo $v; ?></h1>
<object></object>
<object></object>
</a>

Answer 4

Although I totally agree with the selected answer and yes, you shouldn't have Interactive Content inside an A element, sometimes you may need a workaround to this.
Here's an example where you need to put an interactive element inside an A tag. That little close button on the top right.
Here's the HTML for this. (It's not the actual build, I made it a bit simpler)
<a href="#">
<span class="hide">X</span> <!-- THIS IS THE SMALL 'X' WHICH HIDES THE WHOLE BOX -->
<img src="images/camera.svg" width="50" alt="Camera" />
<em>
Upload a profile picture
<small>
Here's the deal. Make your profile look awesome and even get 25 karma for it. We're not kidding.
</small>
</em>
<strong>
+ 25 K
</strong>
</a>
So, basically we want to hide this box when the user clicks on the 'X'. Otherwise, just it should work like a simple A tag. Here's the jQuery which did the trick.
$('.hide').click(function(e) {
e.preventDefault();
e.stopPropagation(); // THIS IS THE KEY PART
// DO WHATEVER YOU WANT, I FADED OUT THE BOX FOR EXAMPLE
$(this).parent().fadeOut(300);
});
I hope this helps someone with the same problem. ;)

Answer 5

I would restyle it so that it is more like this format:
<div class="sp_mngt_bar">
<h1><a href="#"<?php echo $v; ?></a></h1>
</a>

Answer 6

Nested links are illegal. To achieve the same behavior as with nested links you can do the following:
Use #mikevoermans HTML format as shown below and bind click event
<div class="sp_mngt_bar">
<h1><a href="#"<?php echo $v; ?></a></h1>
</div>
Your click event should look like this:
$(".sp_mngt_bar").bind("click", function(e) {
var target = $(e.target);
if(target.has('.t_icons_settings') { //Do something for settings }
else if(target.has('.t_icons_move') { //Do something for move }
else { //Do something for sp_mngt_bar
});

Answer 7

While technically not an answer to the question, another workaround is to bind the click event to a span or div:
<a href="outer-link">
Outer Link
<span class='inner-link'>Inner Link</span>
</a>
$('.inner-link').click(function (e) {
// Prevent the click-through to the underlying anchor
e.stopPropagation();
// Go to a link
window.location.href = 'page.html';
// Or call a javascript method
doSomething();
return false;
});

Answer 8

One solution is to position a link absolutely inside of the parent link container:
<div style="position: relative">
<a href="#">
<h1><a href="#"<?php echo $v; ?></a></h1>
<div id="placeholder" style="height: 24px">
</a>
<div style="position: absolute; bottom: 0">
</div>
</div>

Answer 9

#Jules answer, just shorter:
.parent {
position:relative;
}
.overlay-link {
position:absolute;
inset: 0;
}
html:
<div class="parent">
<a class="overlay-link" href="..."/>
<div class="child">
</div>
</div>