How to get the onclick calling object?

pass in this in the inline click handler

<a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1553661/123.com" onclick="click123(this);">link</a>

or use event.target in the function (according to the W3C DOM Level 2 Event model)

function click123(event)
{
    var a = event.target;
}

But of course, IE is different, so the vanilla JavaScript way of handling this is

function doSomething(e) {
    var targ;
    if (!e) var e = window.event;
    if (e.target) targ = e.target;
    else if (e.srcElement) targ = e.srcElement;
    if (targ.nodeType == 3) // defeat Safari bug
        targ = targ.parentNode;
}

or less verbose

function doSomething(e) {

    e = e || window.event;
    var targ = e.target || e.srcElement || e;
    if (targ.nodeType == 3) targ = targ.parentNode; // defeat Safari bug
}

where e is the event object that is passed to the function in browsers other than IE.

If you’re using jQuery though, I would strongly encourage unobtrusive JavaScript and use jQuery to bind event handlers to elements.