Global onclick handler vs. per-element event handlers - javascript

Consider this example:
You're creating a website that uses client-side rendering.
When the user clicks a link, you want to disable the browser's navigation and render the new page yourself.
Perhaps you also have some html like this, and you want to call upvote_post(id) every time the button is clicked:
<post-element data-id=12345>
...
<upvote-button></upvote-button>
</post-element>
The common way to handle both of these cases would be to add a click event handler on every <a>, <upvote-button>, etc. element that you generate.
But wouldn't it be better to just add an event handler on the document itself?
document.addEventListener('click', function(e) {
for (let elem of e.path) {
if (elem instanceof HTMLAnchorElement && elem.origin==window.location.origin) {
e.preventDefault()
render_page(elem.href)
break
} else if (elem.tagName=='UPVOTE-BUTTON') {
let post = elem.closest('post-element')
upvote_post(post.dataset.id)
break
}
}
})
Of course, it feels wrong to bypass the builtin event handler system, but I can't think of any disadvantages here.
You can still add event handlers to specific elements if you need to, but for common actions, this seems like a better solution.

Related

Redirect an event to an inner element

I have a special scenario where I need to capture key events on a higher level, and redirect them to a lower level. I'm trying to write code like this, but actually it seems like jQuery is dumbly using the exact same event object, so target is not changed, so Maximum callstack size exceeded...
$("#outer").on("keydown", function(evt) {
if (evt.target !== $("#inner")[0] && !$.contains($("#inner")[0], evt.target)) {
$("#inner").trigger(evt);
}
});
With a sample markup
<div id="#outer">
<div id="#inner">
</div>
</div>
What is the proper way to redirect an event to another element? I could of course manually "hack" the target, but is it safe?
I'm working on a plugin which dynamically shows a menu as a popup or as a modal based on screen size. If I have a modal, I need this key redirection. The consumer should not know about wether it's a popup or a modal. I'm using bootstrap's modal plugin, which captures key events because of a "focus-lock thing", so the only way I can make it transparent is that I redirect these events to my real menu.
You could attach the event handler onto the outer and specify a selector to use to match the event:
$('#outer').on('keydown', '#inner', event => {
/* this is executed when #inner is clicked */
});
If you really want to use trigger, you could put it in a setTimeout:
$('#outer').on('keydown', event => {
if (yourCondition) {
setTimeout(() => $('#inner').trigger(event), 0);
}
});
The event will bubble up and you're right, it's the same event. This isn't a jQuery thing but actually just how javascript works. You may want to set a listener on the child element, and use preventDefault();
$("#outer").on("keydown", doSomeThing);
$("#inner").on("keydown", doSomeThingElse);
function doSomeThing(e) {
}
function doSomeThingElse(e) {
e.preventDefault();
}
this will allow you to separate your listeners into distinct functions.
Thank you all for the answers and comments. A few of you suggested preventing propagation of the event at the #inner div. I need to avoid this, I need a way where any external consumer will see this event just as it was triggered by the #inner element for real.
In the meantime I digged into jQuery source and found this line in trigger.
if ( !event.target ) {
event.target = elem;
}
So when jQuery initializes the event to trigger, it only assignes the element to the target if the target is not yet specified. sure they have some good reasons for this behavior, which I cannot see at this moment.
So the best thing I could come up with is a function like this.
function redirectEvent(currentTarget, evt, newTarget) {
if (currentTarget !== newTarget && !$.contains(currentTarget, newTarget)) {
evt = $.Event(evt.type, evt);
delete evt.target;
$(newTarget).trigger(evt);
}
}
As far as first tests go, I can't see any side-effect or drawback.

Method for triggering certain click event using .trigger() but suppressing all others

My situation is that I am trying to trigger a single event using the jQuery .trigger() method. However the element I am triggering has multiple click event listeners.
Actually finding what these listeners are and what they trigger from the source code is probably not viable as its included in the sites main JS file and its all minified and pretty much unreadable.
At the moment I know that the element when clicked performs some kind of ajax call and loads more data into the DOM of the page (which is what i want to trigger), however it also displays an overlay (which is what I want to suppress temporarily).
As its just an overlay there are workaround I can make; using a display:none on it straight after click etc. However it would be much more elegant if i could somehow suppress all click events on this element except the desired event.
Any ideas if this is actually possible? And if so how I would go about it?
You need to register your own event at the top of the event chain. And cancel the event chain in your event. Here is a solution with writing a custom jquery extention.
$.fn.bindFirst = function (which, handler) {
var $elm = $(this);
$elm.unbind(which, handler);
$elm.bind(which, handler);
var events = $._data($elm[0]).events;
var registered = events[which];
registered.unshift(registered.pop());
events[which] = registered;
}
$("#elm").bindFirst("click", function(e) {
// edit: seems like preventing event does not work
// But your event triggers first anyway.
e.preventDefault();
e.stopPropagation();
});
Reference:
https://gist.github.com/infostreams/6540654
EDIT:
https://jsfiddle.net/8nb9obc0/2/
I made a jsFiddle and it seems like event preventing does not work in this example. There might be another solution.

Best practices for where to add event listeners

On my page, the user clicks on an element in order to edit it. To facilitate this, I assign the class editable to all such elements.
How should I listen for clicks on all these elements? Currently, I'm doing this:
document.body.addEventListener("click", (event) => {
if (event.target.classList.contains("editable")) {
// do stuff
}
});
The alternative would be to set a listener on every element, like this:
const editables = document.getElementsByClassName("editable");
for (const editable of editables) {
editable.addEventListener("click", editElement);
}
It seems to me that the first way must be better for performance, since it's only one element being listened on, but is it possible to degrade performance by attaching all such events to the body element? Are there any other considerations (e.g. browser implementations of event handling) that I'm neglecting which would suggest doing it the second way?
Short answer: definitely do it the first way. Event delegation is way more performant, but requires extra conditionals in your code, so it's basically a complexity versus performance tradeoff.
Longer Answer: For a small number of elements, adding individual event handlers works fine. However, as you add more and more event handlers, the browser's performance begins to degrade. The reason is that listening for events is memory intensive.
However, in the DOM, events "bubble up" from the most specific target to the most general triggering any event handlers along the way. Here's an example:
<html>
<body>
<div>
<a>
<img>
</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>
If you clicked on the <img> tag, that click event would fire any event handlers in this order:
img
a
div
body
html
document object
Event delegation is the technique of listening to a parent (say <div>) for a bunch of event handlers instead of the specific element you care about (say <img>). The event object will have a target property which points to the specific dom element from which the event originated (in this case <img>).
Your code for event delegation might look something like this:
$(document).ready(function(){
$('<div>').on('click', function(e) {
// check if e.target is an img tag
// do whatever in response to the image being clicked
});
});
For more information checkout Dave Walsh's blog post on Event Delegation or duckduckgo "event delegation".
NOTE ON CODE SAMPLE IN OP: In the first example, target.hasClass('editable') means that the specific thing clicked on must have the class editable for the if block to execute. As one of the commenters pointed out, that's probably not what you want. You might want to try something along these lines instead:
$(document).on('click', function(e) {
if ($(e.target).parents(".editable").length) {
// Do whatever
}
});
Let's break that down a bit:
$(e.target) - anything that on the page that was clicked converted to jQuery
.parents(".editable") - find all the ancestors of the element clicked, then filter to only include ones with the class "editable"
.length - this should be an integer. If 0, this means there are no parents with "editable" class
Another plus point for the first method
I was using the second (alternative) method that you have mentioned I noticed that when the ajax loaded... the newly created elements were not listening the event. I had to redo the for loop after ajax every time.
With the first method which looks like following in my code also works with ajax.
document.addEventListener('click', function (e) {
if (hasClass(e.target, 'classname')) {
// do stuff
}
}, false);
So first one is better

Multiple JS event handlers on single element

I am working with an existing web app, in the app there are a variety of submit buttons on different forms, some using regular http post, some defining an onClick function, and some binding a js event handler to the button using a class on the element.
What I want to do, is bind another event handler to these buttons by just adding a class to the buttons, but what I want to determine is will the new event handler be guaranteed to be executed, or could one of the form submit actions happen before it does meaning my new function isn't hit.
The example scenario is I want to add a class to these buttons that bimds them all to a common js function that simply logs usage to some api. Is there a risk that the logging function isn't called because the form submit has navigated away from the page?
I've not done loads of js development, and I could test this 100 times over and just get lucky with it firing.
Below is some code I have tested with for one of the examples - again, I'm not asking how to bind multiple events, the question is to about my understanding of the spec and whether execution of all handlers is guaranteed.
$(document).ready(function(){
$('.testingBtn').click(function() {
window.location.replace("http://stackoverflow.com");
});
$( ".testingBtn" ).click(function(){
alert('submitting!');
});
});
<input class="testingBtn" type="submit" id="submitform" value="Complete Signup" />
As seen above, I can bind the multiple events, and in this example, just directed to another url, but this could be a form.submit() etc. In my testing the alert has always fired first, but am I just getting lucky with the race conditions?
In JS, you don't really have control over what order the event handlers are called, but with careful delegation and well-placed listeners, it is possible.
Delegation is one of the most powerful features of the event model. As you may or may not know: in JS, an event is handed to the top of the dom, from where it propagates down to the element onto which the event should be applied. It stands to reason, therefore, that an event listener attached to the global object will call its handler prior to a listener that has been attached to the element itself.
window.addEventListener('click',function(e)
{
e = e || window.event;
var target = e.target || e.srcElement;
console.log('window noticed you clicked something');
console.log(target);//<-- this is the element that was clicked
}, false);//<-- we'll get to the false in a minute
It's important to note we actually have access to the event object in the handlers. In this case, we left the event object untouched, so it'll just continue to propagate down to the target, on its way down, it might meet with something like this:
document.getElementById('container').addEventListener('click', function(e)
{
e = e || window.event;
var target = e.target || e.srcElement;
if (target.tagName.toLowerCase() !== 'a' || target.className.match(/\bclickable\b/))
{
return e;//<return the event, unharmed
}
e.returnValue = false;
if (e.preventDefault)
{
e.preventDefault();
}
}, false);
Now, this handler will be called after the listener at the window level calls its helper. This time, the event is changed if the clicked element didn't have the clickable class, or the element is a link. The event is canceled, but it lives on, still. The event is still free to propagate further down the dom, so we might encounter something like:
document.getElmentById('form3').addEventListener('click',function(e)
{
e = e || window.event;
if (e.returnValue === false || e.isDefaultPrevented)
{//this event has been changed already
//do stuff, like validation or something, then you could:
e.cancelBubble = true;
if (e.stopPropagation)
{
e.stopPropagation();
}
}
}, false);
Here, by calling stopPropagation, the event is killed off. It can't propagate further down the dom to its target unless the event was already altered. If not, the event object travels further down the DOM, as if nothing happened.
Once it reaches its target node, the event enters its second phase: the bubble phase. Instead of propagating down into the deeps of the DOM, it climbs back up, to the top level (all the way to the global object, where it was dispatched... from whence it came and all that).
In the bubble phase, all the same rules apply as in the propagation phase, only the other way around. The event object will encounter the elements that are closest to the target element first, and the global object last.
There's a lot of handy, and clear diagrams for this here. I can't put it any better than good 'ol quirksmode, so I suggest you read what they have to say there.
Bottom line: when dealing with 2 event listeners, attach them both on a different level to sort-of queue them the way you like.
If you want to guarantee both are called, only stop the event from propagating in that handler that will be called last.
When you've got two listeners, attached to the same element/object for the same event, I've never come across a situation where the listener that was attached first, wasn't also called first.
That's it, I'm off to bed, hoping I made sense
jQuery makes this easy.
$(document).on('click', '.someclass', function() {
doStuff();
});
$(document).on('click', '.someclass', function() {
doMoreStuff();
});
Handlers then both will fire on click. jQuery keeps a queue of handers for you. And handles document clicks that match a selector of your choice so that they can be triggered no matter when your buttons are created.
I am/was having a similar issue as this. However I can not affect the order of/delegate the pre-existing 'click' events (added by Wicket framework).
But I still need to execute a new custom event before any of the 'click' or 'change' events handled by the framework.
Luckily there are several events that are actually executed in order. The 'mousedown' and the 'mouseup' happens to happen before the 'click'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOM_events
$(document).on('mousedown', function (event) {
event = event || window.event
var target = event.target || event.srcElement;
console.log(target + ' before default event'); // Hold mouse button down to see this message in console before any action is executed
});
OR
$(document).on('mouseup', function (event) {
event = event || window.event
var target = event.target || event.srcElement;
alert(target + ' before default event'); // You may not notice this event fires when the page changes unless this is an alert
});
This will allow the logging to be done (e.g. via ajax) before the actual event is executed e.g. a page change via (ajax) link.
Of course you may need to have more sophisticated means to detect for what the additional event handling should be done, but you can use for example the 'target' information for this. => This script monitors everything on the page, as this is how I need this to be done.

Javascript cancel POST from another piece of code using one single function

Ok, in my code I have for example, this:
$('.follow').click(function(){
var myself = $(this);
var data = {
id: this.getAttribute('data-id')
}
$.post('/users/setFriend', data, function(msg){
myself.text(msg);
myself.attr('data-status-friends', (myself.attr('data-status-friends').toLowerCase() == 'follow') ? 'following' : 'follow');
});
})
However, i put a class of 'auth' on certain elements that if the user is logged out, run this bit of JS:
$('.auth').click(function(e){
e.preventDefault();
alert('not logged in');
});
This works for the majority of elements, but with the above POST, it seems to still action the POST. How can I definitively cancel the events fired by other bits of code if .auth is clicked?
I don't think we should talk about propagation or defaultAction preventing here. The point is that you create two different series of event handlers: one attached to the .follow elements, another - to the .auth elements. Of course, if an element has two classes, clicking it will trigger both handlers automatically - and they both will be attached to this element (hence no propagation).
The most simple solution here, I think, is to remove click handler from an element when you assign .auth class to it.
Or, alternatively, you can check $(this).hasClass('auth') condition within the .follow handler function - and return false immediately if that's the case.
Rather than stopping the events, I think a better approach would be either to simply not put events into elements which aren't supposed to be doable without logging in, or track the auth state in your JS code with a variable and check that before doing actions. The latter would probably be a better approach to use if you are building a client-side MVC style application.
You could have two issues going on here with different sets of solutions.
The listeners are attached to different elements in reverse of what they should be
The listeners are being attached to the same element
Different Elements
Your handlers are out of order, swap them so that e.stopPropogation() is on the inner(child) element and the $.post() call is on the outter(parent) element.
Same Element
If the listeners are on the same element, neither e.stopPropogation() nor e.preventDefault() will do what you wish as the event listeners will still fire on the same element.
stopPropogation()
Description: Prevents the event from bubbling up the DOM tree,
preventing any parent handlers from being notified of the event.
Propagation according to the DOM Level 2 Spec will still execute all listeners on the same element but not events attached to the parent:
If the capturing EventListener wishes to prevent further processing of
the event from occurring it may call the stopProgagation method of the
Event interface. This will prevent further dispatch of the event,
although additional EventListeners registered at the same hierarchy
level will still receive the event.
preventDefault()
Description: If this method is called, the default action of the event
will not be triggered.
Default actions are are based on which element is being acted upon (W3C). For a link this would be the redirect to the href="" value, input element to focus it, etc. This is not what you desire as you are most likely not the 'default behavior'.
One option is to attach the handler that calls $.post to an element that is higher on the DOM.
$('.follow').parent().click(function(e){e.stopPropogation()})
You might have to alter your target HTML so that you have an inner(child) and outter(parent) element to attach your events to. The goal being to have the $.post handler as the outer(parent) and the inner(child) handler cancel the event.
Another option is to add a check to see if the other class is present on your element.
$('.follow').click(function(){
var myself = $(this);
if(!$(this).hasClass('.auth')){
var data = {
id: this.getAttribute('data-id')
}
$.post('/users/setFriend', data, function(msg){
myself.text(msg);
myself.attr('data-status-friends', (myself.attr('data-status- friends').toLowerCase() == 'follow') ? 'following' : 'follow');
});
}
});

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