Getting an anchor element's absolute URL with jQuery

Question

Given an anchor element (with something like $(\"a:first\")), how do you get the absolute URL that the anchor points to?

Answer 1

If you're using jQuery 1.6+, you can use .prop():

$("a:first").prop("href")

Prior to 1.6, you can access the href property directly on the DOM element:

$("a:first")[0].href;