Develop Reference

JavaScript Click event fires via the Enter Key but not via the Mouse

Some code that looks like the following is firing the click event via the Enter key, but is not responding to the mouse click.
//a is an anchor element
a.addEventListener('click', function (e)
{
//Do Stuff...
});
This page demonstrates the problem. The relevant bit of code is at line 176. This is in the middle of development and currently only (sort of) works in Chrome.
Also, I just verified that it works if I use mousedown, so it's not just the case of an invisible element sitting in front of the anchor.
Any ideas?

Edit: Now that you've shown us the actual code you're using, the problem is related to the fact that the autoSuggest() function has it's own click handler and in that click handler, it is clearing the container which removes all <a> elements in the container so your link object gets destroyed (probably before your click event gets to process). So, you can get events that happen before the click (like mousedown), but after a click, the element is removed from the DOM.
If you tell us what you're trying to actually do when an auto-suggest item is clicked that is different than the default behavior of the autoSuggest() function and you point to any documentation for that function, then perhaps we could offer a better way to solve your issue.
The link may be firing and taking you off to a new page (or reloading the current page), thus preventing you from seeing the click code run. Usually when you process a click event on a link element, you need to prevent the default behavior:
//a is an anchor element
a.addEventListener('click', function (e) {
e.preventDefault();
//Do Stuff...
});
Another possibility is that you are trying to install the event handler too soon either before the DOM has been loaded or before this particular link has been created and thus no actual click event handler is attached to the DOM object. You can verify whether the event handler is even getting called by temporarily putting an alert("Click handler called"); in the event handler and see if that pops up or not.

Disable all actions on elements inside a container

I'm implementing an interactive tutorial for a js-heavy web application. I highlight some container and expect the user to click on some element inside it. At the same time, I want to prevent the user from doing anything else, e.g. clicking on a different link.
The main problem is that I don't want to unbind any events - when the tutorial's closed, the application must work like it did before.
I started with registering a handler on all the containter's descendant elements:
element.on("click.tutorialLock", function(e){
e.stopPropagation();
e.stopImmediatePropagation();
e.preventDefault();
}
Then I set its "priority", so that it executes before any other events:
handlers = element.data("events").click;
our = handlers.pop();
handlers.splice(0, 0, our);
Finally, when I want to unlock some element, I just disable the event on it:
elementToEnable.off(".tutorialLock")
That works, but is very heavy. I tried registering the event only on elements which have some custom event handlers defined, but it omits anchors and other basic elements. Maybe you could come up with some good idea?

I would get the active parent element and pass it into a function which would disable every event other than the events in parent
$('.className').live ('click', function (e)
{
if (!$(this).parents('#targetParent').length))
return false; // same as e.preventDefault() & e.stopPropogation()
});
Hope this is similar to what you want

Prevent firing the blur event if any one of its children receives focus

I have a div on a page that shows some info about a particular category (Image, Name etc).
When I click on the edit image it puts the category into edit mode which allows me to update the name. As you can see from the image below it shows that "Soup" is currently in edit mode, the others are in normal view mode. This all works as expected with the cancel / save buttons doing everything right. (I tried adding an image but wouldn't let me, need more love)
However once in edit mode if I click anywhere else on the page (Outside of the div) the expected result would be that the soup category would go back to view mode. Upon an event firing of some sort, this should also allow me to ask if they wanted to save changes.
So what I then decided to do is create an blur event on the "soups" parent div. This works as expected if I click anywhere on the page, however if I click on the inner element of the div it also causes the parents blur event to be fired, thus causing the category to go back to view mode.
So, is there a way to prevent the parent div from firing the blur event if any one of its children receive focus?
<div tabindex="-1" onblur="alert('outer')">
<input type="text" value="Soup" />
</div>
I just wrote the code without a compiler so not sure if that even works but with that hopefully you get the idea.
I'm using Knockout.js to update the GUI on the fly but that shouldn't effect this answer I wouldn't have thought.

I faced the same issue. This what worked for me.
handleBlur(event) {
// if the blur was because of outside focus
// currentTarget is the parent element, relatedTarget is the clicked element
if (!event.currentTarget.contains(event.relatedTarget)) {
.....
}
}
Enjoy :)

I've had to tackle this problem before. I am not sure if it is the best solution, but it is what I ended up using.
Since the click event fires after the blur, there is no (cross-browser, reliable) way to tell what element is gaining focus.
Mousedown, however, fires before blur. This means that you can set some flag in the mousedown of your children elements, and interrogate that flag in the blur of your parent.
Working example: http://jsfiddle.net/L5Cts/
Note that you will also have to handle keydown (and check for tab/shift-tab) if you want to also catch blurs caused by the keyboard.

I don't think there is any guarantee mousedown will happen before the focus events in all browsers, so a better way to handle this might be to use evt.relatedTarget. For the focusin event, the eventTarget property is a reference to the element that is currently losing focus. You can check if that element is a descendant of the parent, and if its not, you know focus is entering the parent from the outside. For the focusout event, relatedTarget is a reference to the element that is currently receiving focus. Use the same logic to determine if focus is fully leaving the parent:
const parent = document.getElementById('parent');
parent.addEventListener('focusin', e => {
const enteringParent = !parent.contains(e.relatedTarget);
if (enteringParent) {
// do things in response to focus on any child of the parent or the parent itself
}
});
parent.addEventListener('focusout', e => {
const leavingParent = !parent.contains(e.relatedTarget);
if (leavingParent) {
// do things in response to fully leaving the parent element and all of its children
}
});

jQuery blur handler not working on div element?

I don't understand why the jQuery blur handler isn't working in the most simple case. I'm literally creating a div 100px by 100px and setting a blur event on it, but it's not firing (JSFiddle):
<div id="test">this is a test</div>
$(document).ready(function() {
$('#test').bind('blur', function() {
alert('blur event!');
});
});
Is my understanding of blur wrong? I expect the blur event to fire when I click anywhere that is not the div...right?
According to jQuery's documentation:
In recent browsers, the domain of the event has been extended to
include all element types. An element can lose focus via keyboard
commands, such as the Tab key, or by mouse clicks elsewhere on the
page.
I've tried it on the latest Chrome and Firefox on Mac.

From the W3C DOM Events specification:
focus
The focus event occurs when an element receives focus either via a pointing device or by
tabbing navigation. This event is valid for the following elements: LABEL, INPUT, SELECT,
TEXTAREA, and BUTTON.
blur
The blur event occurs when an element loses focus either via the pointing device or by
tabbing navigation. This event is valid for the following elements: LABEL, INPUT, SELECT,
TEXTAREA, and BUTTON.
The jQuery docs state browsers extended the events to other elements, which I'm guessing means blur and focus are aliases for the more generic DOMFocusIn and DOMFocusOut events. Non-input elements aren't eligible to receive those by default though, and an element has to somehow gain focus before losing it - a blur still won't fire for every click outside the div.
This SO question mentions that giving an element a tabindex would allow that, and seems to work for me in Chrome after modifying your jsFiddle. (Albeit with a fairly ugly outline.)

As far as I knew, blur happens on inputs that had the focus, either way you say
I expect the blur event to fire when I click anywhere that is not the div...right?
Not exactly, the blur event only happens for an element that had the focus first
So in order for a blur event to occur, you would first have to give focus to the div, how is the div getting focus first?
If you are really try to determine if there was a click outside of your div, you need to attach a click handler to the document, and then check to see where your click came from.
var div_id = "#my_div";
var outsideDivClick = function (event) {
var target = event.target || event.srcElement;
var box = jQuery(div_id);
do {
if (box[0] == target) {
// Click occured inside the box, do nothing.
return;
}
target = target.parentNode;
} while (target);
}
jQuery(document).click(outsideDivClick);
Just remember that this handler will be run for EVERY click on the page. (in the past if i ha to use something like this, i attach the handler when I need it, and remove it when I no longer need to look for it)

A can't "blur" because that would involve the div having focus in the first place. Non-input elements like a and textarea can have focus, which is what jQuery's documentation refers to.
What you need is the "mouseout" or "mouseleave" event (mouseleave doesn't bubble, mouseout does), which will be fired when the cursor leaves the div. If you need to have clicks, I would attach a "click" event to the body, as well as the div and stopping the event propagation on only the div:
$("div").click(function(e) {
return false; // stop propagation
});
Or, if you're really determined, you can fake the appearance of a div with a and some CSS rules :)

If you want something to happen while you move your mouse over the box, you could use the mouseover event.

Keyup event firing, change event not

I am building a bunch of controls dynamically.
Essentially I am attaching a keyup to the textbox to detect when up/down is pressed in a table to move between cells. I am also watching for when the input field changes, because I then add that control to an array for posting back when the user hits save.
This works when I tab between controls or click from one control to the next. However, If I use the arrow keys as coded to move between fields, the change event does not fire.
My event handling code looks like this:
$('input[id^="reo_"]').bind('change', function () {
rowDetailChange($(this));
});
$('input[id^="reo_"]').bind('keyup', function (e) {
processKeyUp($(this), e);
});

The change event fires upon focus out, blur and enter with the condition that the content has been altered. This is because the event would fire a great lot elsewise.