Develop Reference

querySelector bug <a> [duplicate]

Can anyone please tell me the exact difference between currentTarget and target property in JavaScript events with example and which property is used in which scenario?

Events bubble by default. So the difference between the two is:
target is the element that triggered the event (e.g., the user clicked on)
currentTarget is the element that the event listener is attached to.

target = element that triggered event.
currentTarget = element that has the event listener.

Minimal runnable example
window.onload = function() {
var resultElem = document.getElementById('result')
document.getElementById('1').addEventListener(
'click',
function(event) {
resultElem.innerHTML += ('<div>target: ' + event.target.id + '</div>')
resultElem.innerHTML += ('<div>currentTarget: ' + event.currentTarget.id + '</div>')
},
false
)
document.getElementById('2').dispatchEvent(
new Event('click', { bubbles:true }))
}
<div id="1">1 click me
<div id="2">2 click me as well</div>
</div>
<div id="result">
<div>result:</div>
</div>
If you click on:
2 click me as well
then 1 listens to it, and appends to the result:
target: 2
currentTarget: 1
because in that case:
2 is the element that originated the event
1 is the element that listened to the event
If you click on:
1 click me
instead, the result is:
target: 1
currentTarget: 1
Tested on Chromium 71.

For events whose bubbles property is true, they bubble.
Most events do bubble, except several, namely focus, blur, mouseenter, mouseleave, ...
If an event evt bubbles, the evt.currentTarget is changed to the current target in its bubbling path, while the evt.target keeps the same value as the original target which triggered the event.
It is worth noting that if your event handler (of an event that bubbles) is asynchronous and the handler uses evt.currentTarget. currentTarget should be cached locally because the event object is reused in the bubbling chain (codepen).
const clickHandler = evt => {
const {currentTarget} = evt // cache property locally
setTimeout(() => {
console.log('evt.currentTarget changed', evt.currentTarget !== currentTarget)
}, 3000)
}
If you use React, from v17, react drops the Event Pooling.
Therefore, the event object is refreshed in the handler and can be safe to use in asynchronous calls (codepen).
↑is not always true. onClick event's currentTarget is undefined after the event handler finishes. In conclusion, always cache the event's properties locally if you are going to use them after a synchronous call.
From react docs
Note:
As of v17, e.persist() doesn’t do anything because the SyntheticEvent
is no longer pooled.
And many other things that are too long to be pasted in an answer, so I summarized and made a blog post here.

If this isn't sticking, try this:
current in currentTarget refers to the present. It's the most recent target that caught the event that bubbled up from elsewhere.

<style>
body * {
margin: 10px;
border: 1px solid blue;
}
</style>
<form onclick="alert('form')">FORM
<div onclick="alert('div')">DIV
<p onclick="alert('p')">P</p>
</div>
</form>
If click on the P tag in above code then you will get three alert,and if you click on the div tag you will get two alert and a single alert on clicking the form tag.
And now see the following code,
<style>
body * {
margin: 10px;
border: 1px solid blue;
}
</style>
<script>
function fun(event){
alert(event.target+" "+event.currentTarget);
}
</script>
<form>FORM
<div onclick="fun(event)">DIV
<p>P</p>
</div>
</form>
We just removed onclick from the P and form tag and now when we click we on P tag we get only one alert:
[object HTMLParagraphElement] [object HTMLDivElement]
Here event.target is [object HTMLParagraphElement],and event.curentTarget is [object HTMLDivElement]:
So
event.target is the node from which the event originated,
and
event.currentTarget, on the opposite, refers to the node on which current-event listener was attached.To know more see bubbling
Here we clicked on P tag but we don't have listener on P but on its parent element div.

Event.currentTarget is the element to which the event handler has been
attached, as opposed to Event.target, which identifies the element on
which the event occurred and which may be its descendant.
Source: MDN
target always refers to the element in front of addEventListener - it's the element on which the event originated.
currentTarget tells you - if this is an event that's bubbling - the element that currently has the event listener attached (which will fire the event handler if the event occurs).
See this CodePen for an example. If you open up developer tools and click the square, you'll see that first the div is the target and the currentTarget, but the event bubbles up to the main element - then main element becomes the currentTarget, while the div is still the target. Note the event listener needs to be attached to both elements for the bubbling to occur.

event.target is the node from which the event originated, ie. wherever you place your event listener (on paragraph or span), event.target refers to node (where user clicked).
event.currentTarget, on the opposite, refers to the node on which current-event listener was attached. Ie. if we attached our event listener on paragraph node, then event.currentTarget refers to paragraph while event.target still refers to span.
Note: that if we also have an event listener on body, then for this event-listener, event.currentTarget refers to body (ie. event provided as input to event-listerners is updated each time event is bubbling one node up).

Here's a simple scenario to explain why it's needed. Let's say there are some messages that you show to the user with the format below, but you also want to give them the freedom to close them (unless you have a special mental disorder), so here are some message panes:
[ A message will be in this pane [x] ]
[ A message will be in this pane [x] ]
[ A message will be in this pane [x] ]
and when the user clicks on the [x] button on each, the whole corresponding pane must be removed.
Here's the HTML code for the pane:
<div class="pane">
A message will be here
<span class="remove-button">[x]</span>
</div>
Now where do you want to add the click event listener? The user clicks on [x], but you want to remove the pane, so:
If you add the click event listener to the [x], then you will have to find its parent on DOM and remove it... which is possible but ugly and "DOM dependent".
And if you add the click event listener to the pane, clicking "everywhere on the pane" will remove it, and not just clicking on its [x] button.
So what can we do? We can use the "Bubbles Up" feature of the event system:
"Events are raised and bubble up the DOM tree regardless of the existence of any event handlers."
In our example, this means that even if we add the event handlers to the panes, we will be able to catch the events raised specifically by the [x] button clicks (because events bubble up). So there can be difference between where an event is raised, and where we catch and handle it.
Where it's raised will be in the event.target, and where it's caught will be in the event.currentTarget (where we're currently handling it). So:
let panes = document.getElementsByClassName("pane");
for(let pane of panes){
pane.addEventListener('click', hndlr);
}
function hndlr(e){
if(e.target.classList.contains('remove-button')){
e.currentTarget.remove();
}
}
(The credit of this example goes to the website JavaScript.info)

An experiment:
document.addEventListener("click", (e) => {
console.log(e.target, e.currentTarget);
});
document.querySelector("p").click();
output:
<p></p>
#document
The target (<p></p>) seems to be the element clicked, while the currentTarget (#document) is the element that is listening for the click event.

Accessing data attribute of clicked element with javascript [duplicate]

Can anyone please tell me the exact difference between currentTarget and target property in JavaScript events with example and which property is used in which scenario?

Events bubble by default. So the difference between the two is:
target is the element that triggered the event (e.g., the user clicked on)
currentTarget is the element that the event listener is attached to.

target = element that triggered event.
currentTarget = element that has the event listener.

Minimal runnable example
window.onload = function() {
var resultElem = document.getElementById('result')
document.getElementById('1').addEventListener(
'click',
function(event) {
resultElem.innerHTML += ('<div>target: ' + event.target.id + '</div>')
resultElem.innerHTML += ('<div>currentTarget: ' + event.currentTarget.id + '</div>')
},
false
)
document.getElementById('2').dispatchEvent(
new Event('click', { bubbles:true }))
}
<div id="1">1 click me
<div id="2">2 click me as well</div>
</div>
<div id="result">
<div>result:</div>
</div>
If you click on:
2 click me as well
then 1 listens to it, and appends to the result:
target: 2
currentTarget: 1
because in that case:
2 is the element that originated the event
1 is the element that listened to the event
If you click on:
1 click me
instead, the result is:
target: 1
currentTarget: 1
Tested on Chromium 71.

For events whose bubbles property is true, they bubble.
Most events do bubble, except several, namely focus, blur, mouseenter, mouseleave, ...
If an event evt bubbles, the evt.currentTarget is changed to the current target in its bubbling path, while the evt.target keeps the same value as the original target which triggered the event.
It is worth noting that if your event handler (of an event that bubbles) is asynchronous and the handler uses evt.currentTarget. currentTarget should be cached locally because the event object is reused in the bubbling chain (codepen).
const clickHandler = evt => {
const {currentTarget} = evt // cache property locally
setTimeout(() => {
console.log('evt.currentTarget changed', evt.currentTarget !== currentTarget)
}, 3000)
}
If you use React, from v17, react drops the Event Pooling.
Therefore, the event object is refreshed in the handler and can be safe to use in asynchronous calls (codepen).
↑is not always true. onClick event's currentTarget is undefined after the event handler finishes. In conclusion, always cache the event's properties locally if you are going to use them after a synchronous call.
From react docs
Note:
As of v17, e.persist() doesn’t do anything because the SyntheticEvent
is no longer pooled.
And many other things that are too long to be pasted in an answer, so I summarized and made a blog post here.

If this isn't sticking, try this:
current in currentTarget refers to the present. It's the most recent target that caught the event that bubbled up from elsewhere.

<style>
body * {
margin: 10px;
border: 1px solid blue;
}
</style>
<form onclick="alert('form')">FORM
<div onclick="alert('div')">DIV
<p onclick="alert('p')">P</p>
</div>
</form>
If click on the P tag in above code then you will get three alert,and if you click on the div tag you will get two alert and a single alert on clicking the form tag.
And now see the following code,
<style>
body * {
margin: 10px;
border: 1px solid blue;
}
</style>
<script>
function fun(event){
alert(event.target+" "+event.currentTarget);
}
</script>
<form>FORM
<div onclick="fun(event)">DIV
<p>P</p>
</div>
</form>
We just removed onclick from the P and form tag and now when we click we on P tag we get only one alert:
[object HTMLParagraphElement] [object HTMLDivElement]
Here event.target is [object HTMLParagraphElement],and event.curentTarget is [object HTMLDivElement]:
So
event.target is the node from which the event originated,
and
event.currentTarget, on the opposite, refers to the node on which current-event listener was attached.To know more see bubbling
Here we clicked on P tag but we don't have listener on P but on its parent element div.

Event.currentTarget is the element to which the event handler has been
attached, as opposed to Event.target, which identifies the element on
which the event occurred and which may be its descendant.
Source: MDN
target always refers to the element in front of addEventListener - it's the element on which the event originated.
currentTarget tells you - if this is an event that's bubbling - the element that currently has the event listener attached (which will fire the event handler if the event occurs).
See this CodePen for an example. If you open up developer tools and click the square, you'll see that first the div is the target and the currentTarget, but the event bubbles up to the main element - then main element becomes the currentTarget, while the div is still the target. Note the event listener needs to be attached to both elements for the bubbling to occur.

event.target is the node from which the event originated, ie. wherever you place your event listener (on paragraph or span), event.target refers to node (where user clicked).
event.currentTarget, on the opposite, refers to the node on which current-event listener was attached. Ie. if we attached our event listener on paragraph node, then event.currentTarget refers to paragraph while event.target still refers to span.
Note: that if we also have an event listener on body, then for this event-listener, event.currentTarget refers to body (ie. event provided as input to event-listerners is updated each time event is bubbling one node up).

Here's a simple scenario to explain why it's needed. Let's say there are some messages that you show to the user with the format below, but you also want to give them the freedom to close them (unless you have a special mental disorder), so here are some message panes:
[ A message will be in this pane [x] ]
[ A message will be in this pane [x] ]
[ A message will be in this pane [x] ]
and when the user clicks on the [x] button on each, the whole corresponding pane must be removed.
Here's the HTML code for the pane:
<div class="pane">
A message will be here
<span class="remove-button">[x]</span>
</div>
Now where do you want to add the click event listener? The user clicks on [x], but you want to remove the pane, so:
If you add the click event listener to the [x], then you will have to find its parent on DOM and remove it... which is possible but ugly and "DOM dependent".
And if you add the click event listener to the pane, clicking "everywhere on the pane" will remove it, and not just clicking on its [x] button.
So what can we do? We can use the "Bubbles Up" feature of the event system:
"Events are raised and bubble up the DOM tree regardless of the existence of any event handlers."
In our example, this means that even if we add the event handlers to the panes, we will be able to catch the events raised specifically by the [x] button clicks (because events bubble up). So there can be difference between where an event is raised, and where we catch and handle it.
Where it's raised will be in the event.target, and where it's caught will be in the event.currentTarget (where we're currently handling it). So:
let panes = document.getElementsByClassName("pane");
for(let pane of panes){
pane.addEventListener('click', hndlr);
}
function hndlr(e){
if(e.target.classList.contains('remove-button')){
e.currentTarget.remove();
}
}
(The credit of this example goes to the website JavaScript.info)

An experiment:
document.addEventListener("click", (e) => {
console.log(e.target, e.currentTarget);
});
document.querySelector("p").click();
output:
<p></p>
#document
The target (<p></p>) seems to be the element clicked, while the currentTarget (#document) is the element that is listening for the click event.

When using event.target.getAttribute() on <button> element, it returns null (seemingly) at random? [duplicate]

Can anyone please tell me the exact difference between currentTarget and target property in JavaScript events with example and which property is used in which scenario?

Events bubble by default. So the difference between the two is:
target is the element that triggered the event (e.g., the user clicked on)
currentTarget is the element that the event listener is attached to.

target = element that triggered event.
currentTarget = element that has the event listener.

Minimal runnable example
window.onload = function() {
var resultElem = document.getElementById('result')
document.getElementById('1').addEventListener(
'click',
function(event) {
resultElem.innerHTML += ('<div>target: ' + event.target.id + '</div>')
resultElem.innerHTML += ('<div>currentTarget: ' + event.currentTarget.id + '</div>')
},
false
)
document.getElementById('2').dispatchEvent(
new Event('click', { bubbles:true }))
}
<div id="1">1 click me
<div id="2">2 click me as well</div>
</div>
<div id="result">
<div>result:</div>
</div>
If you click on:
2 click me as well
then 1 listens to it, and appends to the result:
target: 2
currentTarget: 1
because in that case:
2 is the element that originated the event
1 is the element that listened to the event
If you click on:
1 click me
instead, the result is:
target: 1
currentTarget: 1
Tested on Chromium 71.

For events whose bubbles property is true, they bubble.
Most events do bubble, except several, namely focus, blur, mouseenter, mouseleave, ...
If an event evt bubbles, the evt.currentTarget is changed to the current target in its bubbling path, while the evt.target keeps the same value as the original target which triggered the event.
It is worth noting that if your event handler (of an event that bubbles) is asynchronous and the handler uses evt.currentTarget. currentTarget should be cached locally because the event object is reused in the bubbling chain (codepen).
const clickHandler = evt => {
const {currentTarget} = evt // cache property locally
setTimeout(() => {
console.log('evt.currentTarget changed', evt.currentTarget !== currentTarget)
}, 3000)
}
If you use React, from v17, react drops the Event Pooling.
Therefore, the event object is refreshed in the handler and can be safe to use in asynchronous calls (codepen).
↑is not always true. onClick event's currentTarget is undefined after the event handler finishes. In conclusion, always cache the event's properties locally if you are going to use them after a synchronous call.
From react docs
Note:
As of v17, e.persist() doesn’t do anything because the SyntheticEvent
is no longer pooled.
And many other things that are too long to be pasted in an answer, so I summarized and made a blog post here.

If this isn't sticking, try this:
current in currentTarget refers to the present. It's the most recent target that caught the event that bubbled up from elsewhere.

<style>
body * {
margin: 10px;
border: 1px solid blue;
}
</style>
<form onclick="alert('form')">FORM
<div onclick="alert('div')">DIV
<p onclick="alert('p')">P</p>
</div>
</form>
If click on the P tag in above code then you will get three alert,and if you click on the div tag you will get two alert and a single alert on clicking the form tag.
And now see the following code,
<style>
body * {
margin: 10px;
border: 1px solid blue;
}
</style>
<script>
function fun(event){
alert(event.target+" "+event.currentTarget);
}
</script>
<form>FORM
<div onclick="fun(event)">DIV
<p>P</p>
</div>
</form>
We just removed onclick from the P and form tag and now when we click we on P tag we get only one alert:
[object HTMLParagraphElement] [object HTMLDivElement]
Here event.target is [object HTMLParagraphElement],and event.curentTarget is [object HTMLDivElement]:
So
event.target is the node from which the event originated,
and
event.currentTarget, on the opposite, refers to the node on which current-event listener was attached.To know more see bubbling
Here we clicked on P tag but we don't have listener on P but on its parent element div.

Event.currentTarget is the element to which the event handler has been
attached, as opposed to Event.target, which identifies the element on
which the event occurred and which may be its descendant.
Source: MDN
target always refers to the element in front of addEventListener - it's the element on which the event originated.
currentTarget tells you - if this is an event that's bubbling - the element that currently has the event listener attached (which will fire the event handler if the event occurs).
See this CodePen for an example. If you open up developer tools and click the square, you'll see that first the div is the target and the currentTarget, but the event bubbles up to the main element - then main element becomes the currentTarget, while the div is still the target. Note the event listener needs to be attached to both elements for the bubbling to occur.

event.target is the node from which the event originated, ie. wherever you place your event listener (on paragraph or span), event.target refers to node (where user clicked).
event.currentTarget, on the opposite, refers to the node on which current-event listener was attached. Ie. if we attached our event listener on paragraph node, then event.currentTarget refers to paragraph while event.target still refers to span.
Note: that if we also have an event listener on body, then for this event-listener, event.currentTarget refers to body (ie. event provided as input to event-listerners is updated each time event is bubbling one node up).

Here's a simple scenario to explain why it's needed. Let's say there are some messages that you show to the user with the format below, but you also want to give them the freedom to close them (unless you have a special mental disorder), so here are some message panes:
[ A message will be in this pane [x] ]
[ A message will be in this pane [x] ]
[ A message will be in this pane [x] ]
and when the user clicks on the [x] button on each, the whole corresponding pane must be removed.
Here's the HTML code for the pane:
<div class="pane">
A message will be here
<span class="remove-button">[x]</span>
</div>
Now where do you want to add the click event listener? The user clicks on [x], but you want to remove the pane, so:
If you add the click event listener to the [x], then you will have to find its parent on DOM and remove it... which is possible but ugly and "DOM dependent".
And if you add the click event listener to the pane, clicking "everywhere on the pane" will remove it, and not just clicking on its [x] button.
So what can we do? We can use the "Bubbles Up" feature of the event system:
"Events are raised and bubble up the DOM tree regardless of the existence of any event handlers."
In our example, this means that even if we add the event handlers to the panes, we will be able to catch the events raised specifically by the [x] button clicks (because events bubble up). So there can be difference between where an event is raised, and where we catch and handle it.
Where it's raised will be in the event.target, and where it's caught will be in the event.currentTarget (where we're currently handling it). So:
let panes = document.getElementsByClassName("pane");
for(let pane of panes){
pane.addEventListener('click', hndlr);
}
function hndlr(e){
if(e.target.classList.contains('remove-button')){
e.currentTarget.remove();
}
}
(The credit of this example goes to the website JavaScript.info)

An experiment:
document.addEventListener("click", (e) => {
console.log(e.target, e.currentTarget);
});
document.querySelector("p").click();
output:
<p></p>
#document
The target (<p></p>) seems to be the element clicked, while the currentTarget (#document) is the element that is listening for the click event.

Event bubbling in JavaScript

There is something I can't seem to understand about the definition of bubbling.
I know that event bubbling means event propagation from inner element to outer element. I also know that you can "choose" you way of propagation with the last optional parameter of addEventListener().
The thing I do not understand is this one:
<body>
<div id = "divi">
<p id = "para">Paragraph</p>
</div>
<script>
var elementd = document.getElementById('divi');
elementd.addEventListener("click", MessageD);
function MessageD(){
alert('A message');
}
</script>
</body>
Here I attach a click event to my div element. By default, the click event is bubbling, which means he is going up through the DOM. But when I click on my paragraph, the click event is executed.
To my understanding, that means that the click event propagates to the "p" child element first, or DOWN the DOM. Can someone explain to me why and what happens? Thanks!
--- EDIT AFTER SOME ANSWERS ---
Maybe what troubles me is better explained through this example:
<body>
<style>
#myDiv, #results {
margin: 50px;
}
#myDiv {
padding: 10px;
width: 200px;
text-align: center;
background-color: #000;
}
#myDiv div {
margin: 10px;
background-color: #555;
}
</style>
<div id="myDiv">
<div>Text 1</div>
<div>Text 2</div>
<div>Text 3</div>
<div>Text 4</div>
</div>
<div id="results"></div>
<script>
var myDiv = document.getElementById('myDiv'),
results = document.getElementById('results');
myDiv.addEventListener('mouseover', function() {
results.innerHTML += "I'm in.<br />";
}, false);
myDiv.addEventListener('mouseout', function() {
results.innerHTML += "I'm out.<br />";
}, false);
</script>
</body>
If you try running this code, you'll be "out" and "in" any time you enter and exit a child div... meaning you'll be "in" in child divs.
Doesn't that means that the events propagate from the parent to the child, or down way?
--- FINAL EDIT ---
I finally understood: I made a confusion between an event and an event handler.
An event is just a click, so anything in a page can receive it. Once you have clicked, this click event is going to go to the top of the DOM, and when it encounters click event handler, the function associated to the event handler will be executed.
Thanks everyone!

To my understanding, that means that the click event propagates to the "p" child element first, or DOWN the DOM.
No. In that case the p element is the target of event. Event propagates to the div element. div element has a click handler and it's executed.
This is how events work. Target of the event is an element that has triggered the event, the target can be the element that you have attached the listener to or one of it's children/descendants. target property of the event object refers to the target element of the event and when addEventListener is used for attaching an event listener, this value of the handler refers to the owner of the handler, in this case the div element.
The fact that you have attached an event listener has nothing to do with how event works. Click events are fired whenever the user clicks. It's you, the developer, that attaches an event listener for listening to specific event triggered for an element. If you don't attach a listener, still the event is triggered.

When you click on the paragraph, it's not being handled there, so it propagates up to the DIV. If you use this version of the code, it shows which element the event is being handled by. The alert says divi, not para.
var elementd = document.getElementById('divi');
elementd.addEventListener("click", MessageD);
function MessageD() {
alert(this.id);
}
<div id="divi">
<p id="para">Paragraph</p>
</div>

What is event bubbling and capturing?

What is the difference between event bubbling and capturing? When should one use bubbling vs capturing?

Event bubbling and capturing are two ways of event propagation in the HTML DOM API, when an event occurs in an element inside another element, and both elements have registered a handle for that event. The event propagation mode determines in which order the elements receive the event.
With bubbling, the event is first captured and handled by the innermost element and then propagated to outer elements.
With capturing, the event is first captured by the outermost element and propagated to the inner elements.
Capturing is also called "trickling", which helps remember the propagation order:
trickle down, bubble up
Back in the old days, Netscape advocated event capturing, while Microsoft promoted event bubbling. Both are part of the W3C Document Object Model Events standard (2000).
IE < 9 uses only event bubbling, whereas IE9+ and all major browsers support both. On the other hand, the performance of event bubbling may be slightly lower for complex DOMs.
We can use the addEventListener(type, listener, useCapture) to register event handlers for in either bubbling (default) or capturing mode. To use the capturing model pass the third argument as true.
Example
<div>
<ul>
<li></li>
</ul>
</div>
In the structure above, assume that a click event occurred in the li element.
In capturing model, the event will be handled by the div first (click event handlers in the div will fire first), then in the ul, then at the last in the target element, li.
In the bubbling model, the opposite will happen: the event will be first handled by the li, then by the ul, and at last by the div element.
For more information, see
Event Order on QuirksMode
addEventListener on MDN
Events Advanced on QuirksMode
In the example below, if you click on any of the highlighted elements, you can see that the capturing phase of the event propagation flow occurs first, followed by the bubbling phase.
var logElement = document.getElementById('log');
function log(msg) {
logElement.innerHTML += ('<p>' + msg + '</p>');
}
function capture() {
log('capture: ' + this.firstChild.nodeValue.trim());
}
function bubble() {
log('bubble: ' + this.firstChild.nodeValue.trim());
}
function clearOutput() {
logElement.innerHTML = "";
}
var divs = document.getElementsByTagName('div');
for (var i = 0; i < divs.length; i++) {
divs[i].addEventListener('click', capture, true);
divs[i].addEventListener('click', bubble, false);
}
var clearButton = document.getElementById('clear');
clearButton.addEventListener('click', clearOutput);
p {
line-height: 0;
}
div {
display:inline-block;
padding: 5px;
background: #fff;
border: 1px solid #aaa;
cursor: pointer;
}
div:hover {
border: 1px solid #faa;
background: #fdd;
}
<div>1
<div>2
<div>3
<div>4
<div>5</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<button id="clear">clear output</button>
<section id="log"></section>
Another example at JSFiddle.

Description:
quirksmode.org has a nice description of this. In a nutshell (copied from quirksmode):
Event capturing
When you use event capturing
| |
---------------| |-----------------
| element1 | | |
| -----------| |----------- |
| |element2 \ / | |
| ------------------------- |
| Event CAPTURING |
-----------------------------------
the event handler of element1 fires first, the event handler of element2 fires last.
Event bubbling
When you use event bubbling
/ \
---------------| |-----------------
| element1 | | |
| -----------| |----------- |
| |element2 | | | |
| ------------------------- |
| Event BUBBLING |
-----------------------------------
the event handler of element2 fires first, the event handler of element1 fires last.
What to use?
It depends on what you want to do. There is no better. The difference is the order of the execution of the event handlers. Most of the time it will be fine to fire event handlers in the bubbling phase but it can also be necessary to fire them earlier.

If there are two elements element 1 and element 2. Element 2 is inside element 1 and we attach an event handler with both the elements lets say onClick. Now when we click on element 2 then eventHandler for both the elements will be executed. Now here the question is in which order the event will execute. If the event attached with element 1 executes first it is called event capturing and if the event attached with element 2 executes first this is called event bubbling.
As per W3C the event will start in the capturing phase until it reaches the target comes back to the element and then it starts bubbling
The capturing and bubbling states are known by the useCapture parameter of addEventListener method
eventTarget.addEventListener(type,listener,[,useCapture]);
By Default useCapture is false. It means it is in the bubbling phase.
var div1 = document.querySelector("#div1");
var div2 = document.querySelector("#div2");
div1.addEventListener("click", function (event) {
alert("you clicked on div 1");
}, true);
div2.addEventListener("click", function (event) {
alert("you clicked on div 2");
}, false);
#div1{
background-color:red;
padding: 24px;
}
#div2{
background-color:green;
}
<div id="div1">
div 1
<div id="div2">
div 2
</div>
</div>
Please try with changing true and false.

I have found this tutorial at javascript.info to be very clear in explaining this topic. And its 3-points summary at the end is really talking to the crucial points. I quote it here:
Events first are captured down to deepest target, then bubble up. In
IE<9 they only bubble.
All handlers work on bubbling stage excepts
addEventListener with last argument true, which is the only way to
catch the event on capturing stage.
Bubbling/capturing can be
stopped by event.cancelBubble=true (IE) or event.stopPropagation()
for other browsers.

There's also the Event.eventPhase property which can tell you if the event is at target or comes from somewhere else, and it is fully supported by browsers.
Expanding on the already great snippet from the accepted answer, this is the output using the eventPhase property
var logElement = document.getElementById('log');
function log(msg) {
if (logElement.innerHTML == "<p>No logs</p>")
logElement.innerHTML = "";
logElement.innerHTML += ('<p>' + msg + '</p>');
}
function humanizeEvent(eventPhase){
switch(eventPhase){
case 1: //Event.CAPTURING_PHASE
return "Event is being propagated through the target's ancestor objects";
case 2: //Event.AT_TARGET
return "The event has arrived at the event's target";
case 3: //Event.BUBBLING_PHASE
return "The event is propagating back up through the target's ancestors in reverse order";
}
}
function capture(e) {
log('capture: ' + this.firstChild.nodeValue.trim() + "; " +
humanizeEvent(e.eventPhase));
}
function bubble(e) {
log('bubble: ' + this.firstChild.nodeValue.trim() + "; " +
humanizeEvent(e.eventPhase));
}
var divs = document.getElementsByTagName('div');
for (var i = 0; i < divs.length; i++) {
divs[i].addEventListener('click', capture, true);
divs[i].addEventListener('click', bubble, false);
}
p {
line-height: 0;
}
div {
display:inline-block;
padding: 5px;
background: #fff;
border: 1px solid #aaa;
cursor: pointer;
}
div:hover {
border: 1px solid #faa;
background: #fdd;
}
<div>1
<div>2
<div>3
<div>4
<div>5</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<button onclick="document.getElementById('log').innerHTML = '<p>No logs</p>';">Clear logs</button>
<section id="log"></section>

DOM Events describes 3 phases of event propagation: Capturing phase – the event goes down to the element. Target phase – the event reached the target element. Bubbling phase – the event bubbles up from the element.

Bubbling
Event propagate to the upto root element is **BUBBLING**.
Capturing
Event propagate from body(root) element to eventTriggered Element is **CAPTURING**.

As other said, bubbling and capturing describe in which order some nested elements receive a given event.
I wanted to point out that for the innermost element may appear something strange. Indeed, in this case the order in which the event listeners are added does matter.
In the following example, capturing for div2 will be executed first than bubbling; while bubbling for div4 will be executed first than capturing.
function addClickListener (msg, num, type) {
document.querySelector("#div" + num)
.addEventListener("click", () => alert(msg + num), type);
}
bubble = (num) => addClickListener("bubble ", num, false);
capture = (num) => addClickListener("capture ", num, true);
// first capture then bubble
capture(1);
capture(2);
bubble(2);
bubble(1);
// try reverse order
bubble(3);
bubble(4);
capture(4);
capture(3);
#div1, #div2, #div3, #div4 {
border: solid 1px;
padding: 3px;
margin: 3px;
}
<div id="div1">
div 1
<div id="div2">
div 2
</div>
</div>
<div id="div3">
div 3
<div id="div4">
div 4
</div>
</div>
EDIT: Such behavior may vary according to the browser (e.g. currently occurs on Firefox, but not on Chrome and Edge). Nevertheless, I think one should be aware of it.

When browser detects an event, it tries to find an event handler. This process has 3 phases. Let's say we have these elements
<body>
<div>
<button>click</button>
</div>
</body>
1-Capture Phase
browser is going to take a look at the element that was just clicked. Then it will go to the top parent element which is body. if there is any click handle in body, the browser will call it. after checking the body element, it will look at the second top parent element which is div element. This process will repeat until the browser gets down to the button element at the very bottom. Once it sees the button element, Phase One- Capturing will be over. Most of the time we ignore this phase. This code ignores this phase
document.addEventListener('click',handleClick)
If you want to involve this phase, you have to write this
document.addEventListener('click',handleClick,true)
We need this phase when we need to detect a click outside the target. maybe we have a dropdown or a modal open and we want to close it if the user clicks on anywhere outside the modal or dropdown
2-Target Phase
the browser will look at the clicked element which is the Button and if the button has an event handler, it will call it.
3- Bubble Phase
Opposite to Capture Phase, in this phase, browser will start the process from the immediate parent element which is div element in this case and then it will visit the body element. This code will set up the event handler for the bubble phase
document.addEventListener('click',handleClick,false)