detect click on link in Firefox - javascript

I want to detect in my firefox extension if a link has been clicked. So far, for this I add a click event listener to the window
window.addEventListener("click", function(event) { handleWindowClick(event); }, false);
...
handleWindowClick : function(event) {
if ("event.target is a link") {
// do something
}
};
For some links the event.target is simple the URL. However, for some links I get, e.g., a HTMLSpanElement as event.target. Am I on the right track to catch link clicks or are there other ways? If it works this way, how can I ensure the successfully test if the event.targer is a link?

You're adding an event listener to the main window which registers any click. The url's you're having problems with must be wrapped in a <span> tag. What you need is event delegation

Why don't you just put the click event listener to anchors (<a>)?
var hrefs = document.getElementsByTagName('a');
for (i = 0; i < hrefs.length; i++) {
hrefs[i].addEventListener(...)
...
}
or in jQuery:
$('a').click(function () {
...
});

check this out, i hope this is what you are looking for.
window.addEventListener("click", function(event) {
handleWindowClick(event);
}, false);
function handleWindowClick(event){
var origEl = event.target || event.srcElement;
if(origEl.tagName === 'A')
alert("anchor link is clicked");
else if(origEl.parentNode.tagName === 'A')
alert("clicked inside anchor");
else if(origEl.tagName === 'SPAN')
alert("span is clicked");
}
fiddle : http://jsfiddle.net/5zXkN/3/

I extended the answer of dku.rajkumar to support arbitrary constructs within "A"-tags. I'm simply go up the tree until I either find an "A" or I'm at the root (so no link clicked in this case). It seems to do the trick. Thanks to all for your help!
window.addEventListener("click", function(event) { handleWindowClick(event); }, false);
...
isLink : function(element) {
if(element.tagName === 'A')
return true;
else
if (element.parentNode)
return this.isLink(element.parentNode)
else
return false;
},
handleWindowClick : function(event) {
var element = event.target || event.srcElement;
var isLink = this.isLink(element);
if (isLink)
dump("A link has been clicked.\n");
},

Related

Event Delegation / Attaching events to dynamically created elements using Vanilla JavaScript

I am in the process of converting a large script from jQuery to JavaScript. This was code that I didn't write myself but that I forked from a project on GitHub.
I've consulted W3Schools, the official documentation and this website as a reference.
http://youmightnotneedjquery.com/
One of the parts I'm trying to convert into JavaScript is the following.
$('body').on('click','.vb',function(){
exportVB(this.value);
});
According to the aforementioned link,
$(document).on(eventName, elementSelector, handler);
converts to this
document.addEventListener(eventName, function(e) {
// loop parent nodes from the target to the delegation node
for (var target = e.target; target && target != this; target = target.parentNode) {
if (target.matches(elementSelector)) {
handler.call(target, e);
break;
}
}
}, false);
My attempt is as follows
/*document.addEventListener('click',function(e) {
for (var target = e.target; target && target != this; target = target.parentNode) {
if (target.matches('.vb')) {
exportVB.call(target,e);
break;
}
}
}, false);*/
That evidently didn't work so I did a Google search that brought me to this StackOverflow solution
Attach event to dynamic elements in javascript
document.addEventListener('click',function(e){
if(e.target && e.target.id== 'brnPrepend'){
//do something
}
});
//$(document).on('click','#btnPrepend',function(){//do something})
Testing that gave me this idea. I commented it out because that apparently didn't work either.
/*document.addEventListener('click',function(e) {
if (e.target && e.target.className == 'vb') {
exportVB(this.value);
}
});*/
Just for reference, the original jQuery function works well.
I solved it.
document.body.addEventListener('click',function(e) {
for (var target = e.target; target && target != this; target = target.parentNode) {
if (target.matches('.vb')) {
exportVB(target.value);
break;
}
}
});
I can't explain how it worked because I didn't write the original code in the first place. But there were two things I change.
exportVB.call(target.e) to exportVB(target.value)
Removing the false as the last argument.
Rather than iterating over each parent element manually, consider using .closest instead, which will return the ancestor element (or the current element) which matches a selector:
document.querySelector('button').addEventListener('click', () => {
document.body.insertAdjacentHTML('beforeend', '<span class="vb">some span </span>');
});
document.body.addEventListener('click', (e) => {
if (e.target.closest('.vb')) {
console.log('vb clicked');
}
});
<button>add span</button>

Apply a click event to everything but a single element

I want to apply a click event to an entire page in Javascript, to everything but a single banner on top. Let's say that the banner that I don't want the event in has an id of 'bannerID'. I tried doing the following:
document.onclick = function(){clickEvent()}
document.getElementById("bannerID").onclick = function(){return false;}
However, it looks like the document event overrides everything. Does anyone have any advice?
Check for the element-id within the handler, something like;
document.onclick = clickEvent;
function clickEvent(e) {
var from = e.target || e.srcElement;
if (from.id === 'bannerID') { return; }
/* ... the handling continues ... */
}
This is called event delegation
Pass in an event parameter to the callback and check if the id is 'bannerID'
document.onclick =
function(event){
if(event.target.id != 'bannerID'){
clickEvent()
}
};
demo
In the code you have above, you are adding two click events to "bannerID" - so it will execute clickEvent() and return false.
You can, however, exclude the specific element from the onclick function. This might help:
document.onclick = function(e) {
if (e.target.id === 'bannerID') {
return false;
} else {
clickEvent();
}
};

How to get href of anchor when the event.target is HTMLImageElement?

I want to get the href of an anchor element when it is clicked.
I am using the following javascript code:
document.addEventListener('click', function (event)
{
event = event || window.event;
var el = event.target || event.srcElement;
if (el instanceof HTMLAnchorElement)
{
console.log(el.getAttribute('href'));
}
}, true);
This works perfectly for an embedded anchor such as this:
<div><p><a href='link'></a></p><div>
But it doesn't work when I am working with an anchor and an image:
<div><a href='link'><img></a></div>
The event.target is returning the image instead of the anchor.
The javascript code can be amended with the following if case to get around this:
document.addEventListener('click', function (event)
{
event = event || window.event;
var el = event.target || event.srcElement;
if (el instanceof HTMLImageElement)
{
// Using parentNode to get the image element parent - the anchor element.
console.log(el.parentNode.getAttribute('href'));
}
else if (el instanceof HTMLAnchorElement)
{
console.log(el.getAttribute('href'));
}
}, true);
But this doesn't seem very elegant and I'm wondering if there is a better way.
!IMPORTANT!
NOTE: Keep in mind, I have no access to an ID or class, or any other traditional identifier for that matter. All I know is that there will be an anchor clicked and I need to get its href. I don't even know where it will be, if it exists or will be created later.
EDIT: Please no jQuery or other javascript libraries.
Instead of looping all anchors in the DOM, lookup from the event.target element.
Using JavaScript's .closest() MDN Docs
addEventListener('click', function (event) {
event.preventDefault(); // Don't navigate!
const anchor = event.target.closest("a"); // Find closest Anchor (or self)
if (!anchor) return; // Not found. Exit here.
console.log( anchor.getAttribute('href')); // Log to test
});
<a href="http://stackoverflow.com/a/29223576/383904">
<span>
<img src="//placehold.it/200x60?text=Click+me">
</span>
</a>
<a href="http://stackoverflow.com/a/29223576/383904">
Or click me
</a>
it basically works like jQuery's .closest() which does
Closest or Self (Find closest parent... else - target me!)
better depicted in the example above.
Rather than adding a global click handler, why not just target only anchor tags?
var anchors = document.getElementsByTagName("a");
for (var i = 0, length = anchors.length; i < length; i++) {
var anchor = anchors[i];
anchor.addEventListener('click', function() {
// `this` refers to the anchor tag that's been clicked
console.log(this.getAttribute('href'));
}, true);
};
If you want to stick with the document-wide click handler then you could crawl upwards to determine if the thing clicked is-or-is-contained-within a link like so:
document.addEventListener('click', function(event) {
event = event || window.event;
var target = event.target || event.srcElement;
while (target) {
if (target instanceof HTMLAnchorElement) {
console.log(target.getAttribute('href'));
break;
}
target = target.parentNode;
}
}, true);
This way at least you'd avoid writing brittle code that has to account for all of the possible types of anchor-children and nested structure.

Capturing all the <a> click event

I am thinking of to add a javascript function to capture all the <a> click events inside a html page.
So I am adding a global function that governs all the <a> click events, but not adding onclick to each (neither using .onclick= nor attachEvent(onclick...) nor inline onclick=). I will leave each <a> as simple as <a href="someurl"> within the html without touching them.
I tried window.onclick = function (e) {...}
but that just captures all the clicks
How do I specify only the clicks on <a> and to extract the links inside <a> that is being clicked?
Restriction: I don't want to use any exra libraries like jQuery, just vanilla javascript.
Use event delegation:
document.addEventListener(`click`, e => {
const origin = e.target.closest(`a`);
if (origin) {
console.clear();
console.log(`You clicked ${origin.href}`);
}
});
<div>
some link
<div><div><i>some other (nested) link</i></div></div>
</div>
[edit 2020/08/20] Modernized
You can handle all click using window.onclick and then filter using event.target
Example as you asked:
<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
window.onclick = function(e) { alert(e.target);};
</script>
</head>
<body>
google
yahoo
facebook
</body>
</html>
​window.onclick = function (e) {
if (e.target.localName == 'a') {
console.log('a tag clicked!');
}
}​
The working demo.
your idea to delegate the event to the window and then check if the "event.target" is a link, is one way to go (better would be document.body). The trouble here is that it won't work if you click on a child node of your element. Think:
<b>I am bold</b>
the target would be the <b> element, not the link. This means checking for e.target won't work. So, you would have to crawl up all the dom tree to check if the clicked element is a descendant of a <a> element.
Another method that requires less computation on every click, but costs more to initialize would be to get all <a> tags and attach your event in a loop:
var links = Array.prototype.slice.call(
document.getElementsByTagName('a')
);
var count = links.length;
for(var i = 0; i < count; i++) {
links[i].addEventListener('click', function(e) {
//your code here
});
}
(PS: why do I convert the HTMLCollection to array? here's the answer.)
You need to take into account that a link can be nested with other elements and want to traverse the tree back to the 'a' element. This works for me:
window.onclick = function(e) {
var node = e.target;
while (node != undefined && node.localName != 'a') {
node = node.parentNode;
}
if (node != undefined) {
console.log(node.href);
/* Your link handler here */
return false; // stop handling the click
} else {
return true; // handle other clicks
}
}
See e.g. https://jsfiddle.net/hnmdijkema/nn5akf3b/6/
You can also try using this:
var forEach = Array.prototype.forEach;
var links = document.getElementsByTagName('a');
forEach.call(links, function (link) {
link.onclick = function () {
console.log('Clicked');
}
});
It works, I just tested!
Working Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/CR7Sz/
Somewhere in comments you mentioned you want to get the 'href' value you can do that with this:
var forEach = Array.prototype.forEach;
var links = document.getElementsByTagName('a');
forEach.call(links, function (link) {
link.onclick = function () {
console.log(link.href); //use link.href for the value
}
});
Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/CR7Sz/1/
Try jQuery and
$('a').click(function(event) { *your code here* });
In this function you can extract href value in this way:
$(this).attr('href')
Some accepted answers dont work with nested elements like:
<font><u>link</u></font>
There is a basic solution for most cases:
```
var links = document.getElementsByTagName('a');
for(var i in links)
{
links[i].onclick = function(e){
e.preventDefault();
var href = this.href;
// ... do what you need here.
}
}
If anybody is looking for the typed version (TypeScript, using Kooilnc's answer), here it is:
document.addEventListener("click", (e: Event) => {
if(!e.target) { return; }
if(!(e.target instanceof Element)) { return; }
const origin = e.target.closest("a");
if(!origin || !origin.href) { return; }
console.log(`You clicked ${origin.href}`);
});
I guess this simple code will work with jquery.
$("a").click(function(){
alert($(this).attr('href'));
});
Without JQuery:
window.onclick = function(e) {
if(e.target.localName=='a')
alert(e.target);
};
The above will produce the same result.
Very simple :
document.getElementById("YOUR_ID").onclick = function (e) {...}
The selector is what you want to select so lets say you have button called
Button1
The code to capure this is:
document.getElementById("button1").onclick = function (e) { alert('button1 clicked'); }
Hope that helps.

jQuery trigger event when click outside the element

$(document).click(function(evt) {
var target = evt.currentTarget;
var inside = $(".menuWraper");
if (target != inside) {
alert("bleep");
}
});
I am trying to figure out how to make it so that if a user clicks outside of a certain div (menuWraper), it triggers an event.. I realized I can just make every click fire an event, then check if the clicked currentTarget is same as the object selected from $(".menuWraper"). However, this doesn't work, currentTarget is HTML object(?) and $(".menuWraper") is Object object? I am very confused.
Just have your menuWraper element call event.stopPropagation() so that its click event doesn't bubble up to the document.
Try it out: http://jsfiddle.net/Py7Mu/
$(document).click(function() {
alert('clicked outside');
});
$(".menuWraper").click(function(event) {
alert('clicked inside');
event.stopPropagation();
});
http://api.jquery.com/event.stopPropagation/
Alternatively, you could return false; instead of using event.stopPropagation();
if you have child elements like dropdown menus
$('html').click(function(e) {
//if clicked element is not your element and parents aren't your div
if (e.target.id != 'your-div-id' && $(e.target).parents('#your-div-id').length == 0) {
//do stuff
}
});
The most common application here is closing on clicking the document but not when it came from within that element, for this you want to stop the bubbling, like this:
$(".menuWrapper").click(function(e) {
e.stopPropagation(); //stops click event from reaching document
});
$(document).click(function() {
$(".menuWrapper").hide(); //click came from somewhere else
});
All were doing here is preventing the click from bubbling up (via event.stopPrpagation()) when it came from within a .menuWrapper element. If this didn't happen, the click came from somewhere else, and will by default make it's way up to document, if it gets there, we hide those .menuWrapper elements.
try these..
$(document).click(function(evt) {
var target = evt.target.className;
var inside = $(".menuWraper");
//alert($(target).html());
if ($.trim(target) != '') {
if ($("." + target) != inside) {
alert("bleep");
}
}
});
$(document).click((e) => {
if ($.contains($(".the-one-you-can-click-and-should-still-open").get(0), e.target)) {
} else {
this.onClose();
}
});
I know that the question has been answered, but I hope my solution helps other people.
stopPropagation caused problems in my case, because I needed the click event for something else. Moreover, not every element should cause the div to be closed when clicked.
My solution:
$(document).click(function(e) {
if (($(e.target).closest("#mydiv").attr("id") != "mydiv") &&
$(e.target).closest("#div-exception").attr("id") != "div-exception") {
alert("Clicked outside!");
}
});
http://jsfiddle.net/NLDu3/
I do not think document fires the click event. Try using the body element to capture the click event. Might need to check on that...
This code will open the menu in question, and will setup a click listener event. When triggered it will loop through the target id's parents until it finds the menu id. If it doesn't, it will hide the menu because the user has clicked outside the menu. I've tested it and it works.
function tog_alerts(){
if($('#Element').css('display') == 'none'){
$('#Element').show();
setTimeout(function () {
document.body.addEventListener('click', Close_Alerts, false);
}, 500);
}
}
function Close_Alerts(e){
var current = e.target;
var check = 0;
while (current.parentNode){
current = current.parentNode
if(current.id == 'Element'){
check = 1;
}
}
if(check == 0){
document.body.removeEventListener('click', Close_Alerts, false);
$('#Element').hide();
}
}
function handler(event) {
var target = $(event.target);
if (!target.is("div.menuWraper")) {
alert("outside");
}
}
$("#myPage").click(handler);
try this one
$(document).click(function(event) {
if(event.target.id === 'xxx' )
return false;
else {
// do some this here
}
});
var visibleNotification = false;
function open_notification() {
if (visibleNotification == false) {
$('.notification-panel').css('visibility', 'visible');
visibleNotification = true;
} else {
$('.notification-panel').css('visibility', 'hidden');
visibleNotification = false;
}
}
$(document).click(function (evt) {
var target = evt.target.className;
if(target!="fa fa-bell-o bell-notification")
{
var inside = $(".fa fa-bell-o bell-notification");
if ($.trim(target) != '') {
if ($("." + target) != inside) {
if (visibleNotification == true) {
$('.notification-panel').css('visibility', 'hidden');
visibleNotification = false;
}
}
}
}
});

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