I have a page where some event listeners are attached to input boxes and select boxes. Is there a way to find out which event listeners are observing a particular DOM node and for what event?
Events are attached using:
Prototype's Event.observe;
DOM's addEventListener;
As element attribute element.onclick.
Chrome, Firefox, Vivaldi and Safari support getEventListeners(domElement) in their Developer Tools console.
For majority of the debugging purposes, this could be used.
Below is a very good reference to use it:
getEventListeners function
Highly voted tip from Clifford Fajardo from the comments:
getEventListeners($0) will get the event listeners for the element you have focused on in the Chrome dev tools.
If you just need to inspect what's happening on a page, you might try the Visual Event bookmarklet.
Update: Visual Event 2 available.
It depends on how the events are attached. For illustration presume we have the following click handler:
var handler = function() { alert('clicked!') };
We're going to attach it to our element using different methods, some which allow inspection and some that don't.
Method A) single event handler
element.onclick = handler;
// inspect
console.log(element.onclick); // "function() { alert('clicked!') }"
Method B) multiple event handlers
if(element.addEventListener) { // DOM standard
element.addEventListener('click', handler, false)
} else if(element.attachEvent) { // IE
element.attachEvent('onclick', handler)
}
// cannot inspect element to find handlers
Method C): jQuery
$(element).click(handler);
1.3.x
// inspect
var clickEvents = $(element).data("events").click;
jQuery.each(clickEvents, function(key, value) {
console.log(value) // "function() { alert('clicked!') }"
})
1.4.x (stores the handler inside an object)
// inspect
var clickEvents = $(element).data("events").click;
jQuery.each(clickEvents, function(key, handlerObj) {
console.log(handlerObj.handler) // "function() { alert('clicked!') }"
// also available: handlerObj.type, handlerObj.namespace
})
1.7+ (very nice)
Made using knowledge from this comment.
events = $._data(this, 'events');
for (type in events) {
events[type].forEach(function (event) {
console.log(event['handler']);
});
}
(See jQuery.fn.data and jQuery.data)
Method D): Prototype (messy)
$(element).observe('click', handler);
1.5.x
// inspect
Event.observers.each(function(item) {
if(item[0] == element) {
console.log(item[2]) // "function() { alert('clicked!') }"
}
})
1.6 to 1.6.0.3, inclusive (got very difficult here)
// inspect. "_eventId" is for < 1.6.0.3 while
// "_prototypeEventID" was introduced in 1.6.0.3
var clickEvents = Event.cache[element._eventId || (element._prototypeEventID || [])[0]].click;
clickEvents.each(function(wrapper){
console.log(wrapper.handler) // "function() { alert('clicked!') }"
})
1.6.1 (little better)
// inspect
var clickEvents = element.getStorage().get('prototype_event_registry').get('click');
clickEvents.each(function(wrapper){
console.log(wrapper.handler) // "function() { alert('clicked!') }"
})
When clicking the resulting output in the console (which shows the text of the function), the console will navigate directly to the line of the function's declaration in the relevant JS file.
WebKit Inspector in Chrome or Safari browsers now does this. It will display the event listeners for a DOM element when you select it in the Elements pane.
It is possible to list all event listeners in JavaScript: It's not that hard; you just have to hack the prototype's method of the HTML elements (before adding the listeners).
function reportIn(e){
var a = this.lastListenerInfo[this.lastListenerInfo.length-1];
console.log(a)
}
HTMLAnchorElement.prototype.realAddEventListener = HTMLAnchorElement.prototype.addEventListener;
HTMLAnchorElement.prototype.addEventListener = function(a,b,c){
this.realAddEventListener(a,reportIn,c);
this.realAddEventListener(a,b,c);
if(!this.lastListenerInfo){ this.lastListenerInfo = new Array()};
this.lastListenerInfo.push({a : a, b : b , c : c});
};
Now every anchor element (a) will have a lastListenerInfo property wich contains all of its listeners. And it even works for removing listeners with anonymous functions.
Use getEventListeners in Google Chrome:
getEventListeners(document.getElementByID('btnlogin'));
getEventListeners($('#btnlogin'));
(Rewriting the answer from this question since it's relevant here.)
When debugging, if you just want to see the events, I recommend either...
Visual Event
The Elements section of Chrome's Developer Tools: select an element and look for "Event Listeners" on the bottom right (similar in Firefox)
If you want to use the events in your code, and you are using jQuery before version 1.8, you can use:
$(selector).data("events")
to get the events. As of version 1.8, using .data("events") is discontinued (see this bug ticket). You can use:
$._data(element, "events")
Another example: Write all click events on a certain link to the console:
var $myLink = $('a.myClass');
console.log($._data($myLink[0], "events").click);
(see http://jsfiddle.net/HmsQC/ for a working example)
Unfortunately, using $._data this is not recommended except for debugging since it is an internal jQuery structure, and could change in future releases. Unfortunately I know of no other easy means of accessing the events.
1: Prototype.observe uses Element.addEventListener (see the source code)
2: You can override Element.addEventListener to remember the added listeners (handy property EventListenerList was removed from DOM3 spec proposal). Run this code before any event is attached:
(function() {
Element.prototype._addEventListener = Element.prototype.addEventListener;
Element.prototype.addEventListener = function(a,b,c) {
this._addEventListener(a,b,c);
if(!this.eventListenerList) this.eventListenerList = {};
if(!this.eventListenerList[a]) this.eventListenerList[a] = [];
this.eventListenerList[a].push(b);
};
})();
Read all the events by:
var clicks = someElement.eventListenerList.click;
if(clicks) clicks.forEach(function(f) {
alert("I listen to this function: "+f.toString());
});
And don't forget to override Element.removeEventListener to remove the event from the custom Element.eventListenerList.
3: the Element.onclick property needs special care here:
if(someElement.onclick)
alert("I also listen tho this: "+someElement.onclick.toString());
4: don't forget the Element.onclick content attribute: these are two different things:
someElement.onclick = someHandler; // IDL attribute
someElement.setAttribute("onclick","otherHandler(event)"); // content attribute
So you need to handle it, too:
var click = someElement.getAttribute("onclick");
if(click) alert("I even listen to this: "+click);
The Visual Event bookmarklet (mentioned in the most popular answer) only steals the custom library handler cache:
It turns out that there is no standard method provided by the W3C
recommended DOM interface to find out what event listeners are
attached to a particular element. While this may appear to be an
oversight, there was a proposal to include a property called
eventListenerList to the level 3 DOM specification, but was
unfortunately been removed in later drafts. As such we are forced to
looked at the individual Javascript libraries, which typically
maintain a cache of attached events (so they can later be removed and
perform other useful abstractions).
As such, in order for Visual Event to show events, it must be able to
parse the event information out of a Javascript library.
Element overriding may be questionable (i.e. because there are some DOM specific features like live collections, which can not be coded in JS), but it gives the eventListenerList support natively and it works in Chrome, Firefox and Opera (doesn't work in IE7).
Paste in console to get all eventListeners printed beside their HTML element
Array.from(document.querySelectorAll("*")).forEach(element => {
const events = getEventListeners(element)
if (Object.keys(events).length !== 0) {
console.log(element, events)
}
})
You could wrap the native DOM methods for managing event listeners by putting this at the top of your <head>:
<script>
(function(w){
var originalAdd = w.addEventListener;
w.addEventListener = function(){
// add your own stuff here to debug
return originalAdd.apply(this, arguments);
};
var originalRemove = w.removeEventListener;
w.removeEventListener = function(){
// add your own stuff here to debug
return originalRemove.apply(this, arguments);
};
})(window);
</script>
H/T #les2
The Firefox developer tools now does this. Events are shown by clicking the "ev" button on the right of each element's display, including jQuery and DOM events.
If you have Firebug, you can use console.dir(object or array) to print a nice tree in the console log of any JavaScript scalar, array, or object.
Try:
console.dir(clickEvents);
or
console.dir(window);
Fully working solution based on answer by Jan Turon - behaves like getEventListeners() from console:
(There is a little bug with duplicates. It doesn't break much anyway.)
(function() {
Element.prototype._addEventListener = Element.prototype.addEventListener;
Element.prototype.addEventListener = function(a,b,c) {
if(c==undefined)
c=false;
this._addEventListener(a,b,c);
if(!this.eventListenerList)
this.eventListenerList = {};
if(!this.eventListenerList[a])
this.eventListenerList[a] = [];
//this.removeEventListener(a,b,c); // TODO - handle duplicates..
this.eventListenerList[a].push({listener:b,useCapture:c});
};
Element.prototype.getEventListeners = function(a){
if(!this.eventListenerList)
this.eventListenerList = {};
if(a==undefined)
return this.eventListenerList;
return this.eventListenerList[a];
};
Element.prototype.clearEventListeners = function(a){
if(!this.eventListenerList)
this.eventListenerList = {};
if(a==undefined){
for(var x in (this.getEventListeners())) this.clearEventListeners(x);
return;
}
var el = this.getEventListeners(a);
if(el==undefined)
return;
for(var i = el.length - 1; i >= 0; --i) {
var ev = el[i];
this.removeEventListener(a, ev.listener, ev.useCapture);
}
};
Element.prototype._removeEventListener = Element.prototype.removeEventListener;
Element.prototype.removeEventListener = function(a,b,c) {
if(c==undefined)
c=false;
this._removeEventListener(a,b,c);
if(!this.eventListenerList)
this.eventListenerList = {};
if(!this.eventListenerList[a])
this.eventListenerList[a] = [];
// Find the event in the list
for(var i=0;i<this.eventListenerList[a].length;i++){
if(this.eventListenerList[a][i].listener==b, this.eventListenerList[a][i].useCapture==c){ // Hmm..
this.eventListenerList[a].splice(i, 1);
break;
}
}
if(this.eventListenerList[a].length==0)
delete this.eventListenerList[a];
};
})();
Usage:
someElement.getEventListeners([name]) - return list of event listeners, if name is set return array of listeners for that event
someElement.clearEventListeners([name]) - remove all event listeners, if name is set only remove listeners for that event
Update 2022:
In the Chrome Developer Tools, in the Elements panel, there is the Event Listeners tab, where you can see listeners for the element.
You can also unselect "Ancestors" so it only shows the listeners for that element
Opera 12 (not the latest Chrome Webkit engine based) Dragonfly has had this for a while and is obviously displayed in the DOM structure. In my opinion it is a superior debugger and is the only reason remaining why I still use the Opera 12 based version (there is no v13, v14 version and the v15 Webkit based lacks Dragonfly still)
Prototype 1.7.1 way
function get_element_registry(element) {
var cache = Event.cache;
if(element === window) return 0;
if(typeof element._prototypeUID === 'undefined') {
element._prototypeUID = Element.Storage.UID++;
}
var uid = element._prototypeUID;
if(!cache[uid]) cache[uid] = {element: element};
return cache[uid];
}
I am trying to do that in jQuery 2.1, and with the "$().click() -> $(element).data("events").click;" method it doesn't work.
I realized that only the $._data() functions works in my case :
$(document).ready(function(){
var node = $('body');
// Bind 3 events to body click
node.click(function(e) { alert('hello'); })
.click(function(e) { alert('bye'); })
.click(fun_1);
// Inspect the events of body
var events = $._data(node[0], "events").click;
var ev1 = events[0].handler // -> function(e) { alert('hello')
var ev2 = events[1].handler // -> function(e) { alert('bye')
var ev3 = events[2].handler // -> function fun_1()
$('body')
.append('<p> Event1 = ' + eval(ev1).toString() + '</p>')
.append('<p> Event2 = ' + eval(ev2).toString() + '</p>')
.append('<p> Event3 = ' + eval(ev3).toString() + '</p>');
});
function fun_1() {
var txt = 'text del missatge';
alert(txt);
}
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<body>
</body>
I was recently working with events and wanted to view/control all events in a page. Having looked at possible solutions, I've decided to go my own way and create a custom system to monitor events. So, I did three things.
First, I needed a container for all the event listeners in the page: that's theEventListeners object. It has three useful methods: add(), remove(), and get().
Next, I created an EventListener object to hold the necessary information for the event, i.e.: target, type, callback, options, useCapture, wantsUntrusted, and added a method remove() to remove the listener.
Lastly, I extended the native addEventListener() and removeEventListener() methods to make them work with the objects I've created (EventListener and EventListeners).
Usage:
var bodyClickEvent = document.body.addEventListener("click", function () {
console.log("body click");
});
// bodyClickEvent.remove();
addEventListener() creates an EventListener object, adds it to EventListeners and returns the EventListener object, so it can be removed later.
EventListeners.get() can be used to view the listeners in the page. It accepts an EventTarget or a string (event type).
// EventListeners.get(document.body);
// EventListeners.get("click");
Demo
Let's say we want to know every event listener in this current page. We can do that (assuming you're using a script manager extension, Tampermonkey in this case). Following script does this:
// ==UserScript==
// #name New Userscript
// #namespace http://tampermonkey.net/
// #version 0.1
// #description try to take over the world!
// #author You
// #include https://stackoverflow.com/*
// #grant none
// ==/UserScript==
(function() {
fetch("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/akinuri/js-lib/master/EventListener.js")
.then(function (response) {
return response.text();
})
.then(function (text) {
eval(text);
window.EventListeners = EventListeners;
});
})(window);
And when we list all the listeners, it says there are 299 event listeners. There "seems" to be some duplicates, but I don't know if they're really duplicates. Not every event type is duplicated, so all those "duplicates" might be an individual listener.
Code can be found at my repository. I didn't want to post it here because it's rather long.
Update: This doesn't seem to work with jQuery. When I examine the EventListener, I see that the callback is
function(b){return"undefined"!=typeof r&&r.event.triggered!==b.type?r.event.dispatch.apply(a,arguments):void 0}
I believe this belongs to jQuery, and is not the actual callback. jQuery stores the actual callback in the properties of the EventTarget:
$(document.body).click(function () {
console.log("jquery click");
});
To remove an event listener, the actual callback needs to be passed to the removeEventListener() method. So in order to make this work with jQuery, it needs further modification. I might fix that in the future.
There exists nice jQuery Events extension :
(topic source)
changing these functions will allow you to log the listeners added:
EventTarget.prototype.addEventListener
EventTarget.prototype.attachEvent
EventTarget.prototype.removeEventListener
EventTarget.prototype.detachEvent
read the rest of the listeners with
console.log(someElement.onclick);
console.log(someElement.getAttribute("onclick"));
Related
I have a hyperlink in my page. I am trying to automate a number of clicks on the hyperlink for testing purposes. Is there any way you can simulate 50 clicks on the hyperlink using JavaScript?
MSDN
I'm looking for onClick event trigger from the JavaScript.
Performing a single click on an HTML element: Simply do element.click(). Most major browsers support this.
To repeat the click more than once: Add an ID to the element to uniquely select it:
Google Chrome
and call the .click() method in your JavaScript code via a for loop:
var link = document.getElementById('my-link');
for(var i = 0; i < 50; i++)
link.click();
You should just use click. For more advanced event firing, use dispatchEvent.
const body = document.body;
body.addEventListener('click', e => {
console.log('clicked body');
});
console.log('Using click()');
body.click();
console.log('Using dispatchEvent');
body.dispatchEvent(new Event('click'));
Original Answer - Obsolete
Here is what I use for IE9+ http://jsfiddle.net/mendesjuan/rHMCy/4/
/**
* Fire an event handler to the specified node. Event handlers can detect that the event was fired programatically
* by testing for a 'synthetic=true' property on the event object
* #param {HTMLNode} node The node to fire the event handler on.
* #param {String} eventName The name of the event without the "on" (e.g., "focus")
*/
function fireEvent(node, eventName) {
// Make sure we use the ownerDocument from the provided node to avoid cross-window problems
var doc;
if (node.ownerDocument) {
doc = node.ownerDocument;
} else if (node.nodeType == 9){
// the node may be the document itself, nodeType 9 = DOCUMENT_NODE
doc = node;
} else {
throw new Error("Invalid node passed to fireEvent: " + node.id);
}
if (node.dispatchEvent) {
// Gecko-style approach (now the standard) takes more work
var eventClass = "";
// Different events have different event classes.
// If this switch statement can't map an eventName to an eventClass,
// the event firing is going to fail.
switch (eventName) {
case "click": // Dispatching of 'click' appears to not work correctly in Safari. Use 'mousedown' or 'mouseup' instead.
case "mousedown":
case "mouseup":
eventClass = "MouseEvents";
break;
case "focus":
case "change":
case "blur":
case "select":
eventClass = "HTMLEvents";
break;
default:
throw "fireEvent: Couldn't find an event class for event '" + eventName + "'.";
break;
}
var event = doc.createEvent(eventClass);
event.initEvent(eventName, true, true); // All events created as bubbling and cancelable.
event.synthetic = true; // allow detection of synthetic events
// The second parameter says go ahead with the default action
node.dispatchEvent(event, true);
} else if (node.fireEvent) {
// IE-old school style, you can drop this if you don't need to support IE8 and lower
var event = doc.createEventObject();
event.synthetic = true; // allow detection of synthetic events
node.fireEvent("on" + eventName, event);
}
};
Note that calling fireEvent(inputField, 'change'); does not mean it will actually change the input field. The typical use case for firing a change event is when you set a field programmatically and you want event handlers to be called since calling input.value="Something" won't trigger a change event.
What
l.onclick();
does is exactly calling the onclick function of l, that is, if you have set one with l.onclick = myFunction;. If you haven't set l.onclick, it does nothing. In contrast,
l.click();
simulates a click and fires all event handlers, whether added with l.addEventHandler('click', myFunction);, in HTML, or in any other way.
I'm quite ashamed that there are so many incorrect or undisclosed partial applicability.
The easiest way to do this is through Chrome or Opera (my examples will use Chrome) using the Console. Enter the following code into the console (generally in 1 line):
var l = document.getElementById('testLink');
for(var i=0; i<5; i++){
l.click();
}
This will generate the required result
.click() does not work with Android (look at mozilla docs, at mobile section). You can trigger the click event with this method:
function fireClick(node){
if (document.createEvent) {
var evt = document.createEvent('MouseEvents');
evt.initEvent('click', true, false);
node.dispatchEvent(evt);
} else if (document.createEventObject) {
node.fireEvent('onclick') ;
} else if (typeof node.onclick == 'function') {
node.onclick();
}
}
From this post
Use a testing framework
This might be helpful - http://seleniumhq.org/ - Selenium is a web application automated testing system.
You can create tests using the Firefox plugin Selenium IDE
Manual firing of events
To manually fire events the correct way you will need to use different methods for different browsers - either el.dispatchEvent or el.fireEvent where el will be your Anchor element. I believe both of these will require constructing an Event object to pass in.
The alternative, not entirely correct, quick-and-dirty way would be this:
var el = document.getElementById('anchorelementid');
el.onclick(); // Not entirely correct because your event handler will be called
// without an Event object parameter.
IE9+
function triggerEvent(el, type){
var e = document.createEvent('HTMLEvents');
e.initEvent(type, false, true);
el.dispatchEvent(e);
}
Usage example:
var el = document.querySelector('input[type="text"]');
triggerEvent(el, 'mousedown');
Source: https://plainjs.com/javascript/events/trigger-an-event-11/
Please call trigger function any where and button will click.
<a href="#" id="myBtn" title="" >Button click </a>
function trigger(){
document.getElementById("myBtn").click();
}
Fair warning:
element.onclick() does not behave as expected. It only runs the code within onclick="" attribute, but does not trigger default behavior.
I had similar issue with radio button not setting to checked, even though onclick custom function was running fine. Had to add radio.checked = "true"; to set it. Probably the same goes and for other elements (after a.onclick() there should be also window.location.href = "url";)
I have a page where some event listeners are attached to input boxes and select boxes. Is there a way to find out which event listeners are observing a particular DOM node and for what event?
Events are attached using:
Prototype's Event.observe;
DOM's addEventListener;
As element attribute element.onclick.
Chrome, Firefox, Vivaldi and Safari support getEventListeners(domElement) in their Developer Tools console.
For majority of the debugging purposes, this could be used.
Below is a very good reference to use it:
getEventListeners function
Highly voted tip from Clifford Fajardo from the comments:
getEventListeners($0) will get the event listeners for the element you have focused on in the Chrome dev tools.
If you just need to inspect what's happening on a page, you might try the Visual Event bookmarklet.
Update: Visual Event 2 available.
It depends on how the events are attached. For illustration presume we have the following click handler:
var handler = function() { alert('clicked!') };
We're going to attach it to our element using different methods, some which allow inspection and some that don't.
Method A) single event handler
element.onclick = handler;
// inspect
console.log(element.onclick); // "function() { alert('clicked!') }"
Method B) multiple event handlers
if(element.addEventListener) { // DOM standard
element.addEventListener('click', handler, false)
} else if(element.attachEvent) { // IE
element.attachEvent('onclick', handler)
}
// cannot inspect element to find handlers
Method C): jQuery
$(element).click(handler);
1.3.x
// inspect
var clickEvents = $(element).data("events").click;
jQuery.each(clickEvents, function(key, value) {
console.log(value) // "function() { alert('clicked!') }"
})
1.4.x (stores the handler inside an object)
// inspect
var clickEvents = $(element).data("events").click;
jQuery.each(clickEvents, function(key, handlerObj) {
console.log(handlerObj.handler) // "function() { alert('clicked!') }"
// also available: handlerObj.type, handlerObj.namespace
})
1.7+ (very nice)
Made using knowledge from this comment.
events = $._data(this, 'events');
for (type in events) {
events[type].forEach(function (event) {
console.log(event['handler']);
});
}
(See jQuery.fn.data and jQuery.data)
Method D): Prototype (messy)
$(element).observe('click', handler);
1.5.x
// inspect
Event.observers.each(function(item) {
if(item[0] == element) {
console.log(item[2]) // "function() { alert('clicked!') }"
}
})
1.6 to 1.6.0.3, inclusive (got very difficult here)
// inspect. "_eventId" is for < 1.6.0.3 while
// "_prototypeEventID" was introduced in 1.6.0.3
var clickEvents = Event.cache[element._eventId || (element._prototypeEventID || [])[0]].click;
clickEvents.each(function(wrapper){
console.log(wrapper.handler) // "function() { alert('clicked!') }"
})
1.6.1 (little better)
// inspect
var clickEvents = element.getStorage().get('prototype_event_registry').get('click');
clickEvents.each(function(wrapper){
console.log(wrapper.handler) // "function() { alert('clicked!') }"
})
When clicking the resulting output in the console (which shows the text of the function), the console will navigate directly to the line of the function's declaration in the relevant JS file.
WebKit Inspector in Chrome or Safari browsers now does this. It will display the event listeners for a DOM element when you select it in the Elements pane.
It is possible to list all event listeners in JavaScript: It's not that hard; you just have to hack the prototype's method of the HTML elements (before adding the listeners).
function reportIn(e){
var a = this.lastListenerInfo[this.lastListenerInfo.length-1];
console.log(a)
}
HTMLAnchorElement.prototype.realAddEventListener = HTMLAnchorElement.prototype.addEventListener;
HTMLAnchorElement.prototype.addEventListener = function(a,b,c){
this.realAddEventListener(a,reportIn,c);
this.realAddEventListener(a,b,c);
if(!this.lastListenerInfo){ this.lastListenerInfo = new Array()};
this.lastListenerInfo.push({a : a, b : b , c : c});
};
Now every anchor element (a) will have a lastListenerInfo property wich contains all of its listeners. And it even works for removing listeners with anonymous functions.
Use getEventListeners in Google Chrome:
getEventListeners(document.getElementByID('btnlogin'));
getEventListeners($('#btnlogin'));
(Rewriting the answer from this question since it's relevant here.)
When debugging, if you just want to see the events, I recommend either...
Visual Event
The Elements section of Chrome's Developer Tools: select an element and look for "Event Listeners" on the bottom right (similar in Firefox)
If you want to use the events in your code, and you are using jQuery before version 1.8, you can use:
$(selector).data("events")
to get the events. As of version 1.8, using .data("events") is discontinued (see this bug ticket). You can use:
$._data(element, "events")
Another example: Write all click events on a certain link to the console:
var $myLink = $('a.myClass');
console.log($._data($myLink[0], "events").click);
(see http://jsfiddle.net/HmsQC/ for a working example)
Unfortunately, using $._data this is not recommended except for debugging since it is an internal jQuery structure, and could change in future releases. Unfortunately I know of no other easy means of accessing the events.
1: Prototype.observe uses Element.addEventListener (see the source code)
2: You can override Element.addEventListener to remember the added listeners (handy property EventListenerList was removed from DOM3 spec proposal). Run this code before any event is attached:
(function() {
Element.prototype._addEventListener = Element.prototype.addEventListener;
Element.prototype.addEventListener = function(a,b,c) {
this._addEventListener(a,b,c);
if(!this.eventListenerList) this.eventListenerList = {};
if(!this.eventListenerList[a]) this.eventListenerList[a] = [];
this.eventListenerList[a].push(b);
};
})();
Read all the events by:
var clicks = someElement.eventListenerList.click;
if(clicks) clicks.forEach(function(f) {
alert("I listen to this function: "+f.toString());
});
And don't forget to override Element.removeEventListener to remove the event from the custom Element.eventListenerList.
3: the Element.onclick property needs special care here:
if(someElement.onclick)
alert("I also listen tho this: "+someElement.onclick.toString());
4: don't forget the Element.onclick content attribute: these are two different things:
someElement.onclick = someHandler; // IDL attribute
someElement.setAttribute("onclick","otherHandler(event)"); // content attribute
So you need to handle it, too:
var click = someElement.getAttribute("onclick");
if(click) alert("I even listen to this: "+click);
The Visual Event bookmarklet (mentioned in the most popular answer) only steals the custom library handler cache:
It turns out that there is no standard method provided by the W3C
recommended DOM interface to find out what event listeners are
attached to a particular element. While this may appear to be an
oversight, there was a proposal to include a property called
eventListenerList to the level 3 DOM specification, but was
unfortunately been removed in later drafts. As such we are forced to
looked at the individual Javascript libraries, which typically
maintain a cache of attached events (so they can later be removed and
perform other useful abstractions).
As such, in order for Visual Event to show events, it must be able to
parse the event information out of a Javascript library.
Element overriding may be questionable (i.e. because there are some DOM specific features like live collections, which can not be coded in JS), but it gives the eventListenerList support natively and it works in Chrome, Firefox and Opera (doesn't work in IE7).
Paste in console to get all eventListeners printed beside their HTML element
Array.from(document.querySelectorAll("*")).forEach(element => {
const events = getEventListeners(element)
if (Object.keys(events).length !== 0) {
console.log(element, events)
}
})
You could wrap the native DOM methods for managing event listeners by putting this at the top of your <head>:
<script>
(function(w){
var originalAdd = w.addEventListener;
w.addEventListener = function(){
// add your own stuff here to debug
return originalAdd.apply(this, arguments);
};
var originalRemove = w.removeEventListener;
w.removeEventListener = function(){
// add your own stuff here to debug
return originalRemove.apply(this, arguments);
};
})(window);
</script>
H/T #les2
The Firefox developer tools now does this. Events are shown by clicking the "ev" button on the right of each element's display, including jQuery and DOM events.
If you have Firebug, you can use console.dir(object or array) to print a nice tree in the console log of any JavaScript scalar, array, or object.
Try:
console.dir(clickEvents);
or
console.dir(window);
Fully working solution based on answer by Jan Turon - behaves like getEventListeners() from console:
(There is a little bug with duplicates. It doesn't break much anyway.)
(function() {
Element.prototype._addEventListener = Element.prototype.addEventListener;
Element.prototype.addEventListener = function(a,b,c) {
if(c==undefined)
c=false;
this._addEventListener(a,b,c);
if(!this.eventListenerList)
this.eventListenerList = {};
if(!this.eventListenerList[a])
this.eventListenerList[a] = [];
//this.removeEventListener(a,b,c); // TODO - handle duplicates..
this.eventListenerList[a].push({listener:b,useCapture:c});
};
Element.prototype.getEventListeners = function(a){
if(!this.eventListenerList)
this.eventListenerList = {};
if(a==undefined)
return this.eventListenerList;
return this.eventListenerList[a];
};
Element.prototype.clearEventListeners = function(a){
if(!this.eventListenerList)
this.eventListenerList = {};
if(a==undefined){
for(var x in (this.getEventListeners())) this.clearEventListeners(x);
return;
}
var el = this.getEventListeners(a);
if(el==undefined)
return;
for(var i = el.length - 1; i >= 0; --i) {
var ev = el[i];
this.removeEventListener(a, ev.listener, ev.useCapture);
}
};
Element.prototype._removeEventListener = Element.prototype.removeEventListener;
Element.prototype.removeEventListener = function(a,b,c) {
if(c==undefined)
c=false;
this._removeEventListener(a,b,c);
if(!this.eventListenerList)
this.eventListenerList = {};
if(!this.eventListenerList[a])
this.eventListenerList[a] = [];
// Find the event in the list
for(var i=0;i<this.eventListenerList[a].length;i++){
if(this.eventListenerList[a][i].listener==b, this.eventListenerList[a][i].useCapture==c){ // Hmm..
this.eventListenerList[a].splice(i, 1);
break;
}
}
if(this.eventListenerList[a].length==0)
delete this.eventListenerList[a];
};
})();
Usage:
someElement.getEventListeners([name]) - return list of event listeners, if name is set return array of listeners for that event
someElement.clearEventListeners([name]) - remove all event listeners, if name is set only remove listeners for that event
Opera 12 (not the latest Chrome Webkit engine based) Dragonfly has had this for a while and is obviously displayed in the DOM structure. In my opinion it is a superior debugger and is the only reason remaining why I still use the Opera 12 based version (there is no v13, v14 version and the v15 Webkit based lacks Dragonfly still)
Update 2022:
In the Chrome Developer Tools, in the Elements panel, there is the Event Listeners tab, where you can see listeners for the element.
You can also unselect "Ancestors" so it only shows the listeners for that element
Prototype 1.7.1 way
function get_element_registry(element) {
var cache = Event.cache;
if(element === window) return 0;
if(typeof element._prototypeUID === 'undefined') {
element._prototypeUID = Element.Storage.UID++;
}
var uid = element._prototypeUID;
if(!cache[uid]) cache[uid] = {element: element};
return cache[uid];
}
I am trying to do that in jQuery 2.1, and with the "$().click() -> $(element).data("events").click;" method it doesn't work.
I realized that only the $._data() functions works in my case :
$(document).ready(function(){
var node = $('body');
// Bind 3 events to body click
node.click(function(e) { alert('hello'); })
.click(function(e) { alert('bye'); })
.click(fun_1);
// Inspect the events of body
var events = $._data(node[0], "events").click;
var ev1 = events[0].handler // -> function(e) { alert('hello')
var ev2 = events[1].handler // -> function(e) { alert('bye')
var ev3 = events[2].handler // -> function fun_1()
$('body')
.append('<p> Event1 = ' + eval(ev1).toString() + '</p>')
.append('<p> Event2 = ' + eval(ev2).toString() + '</p>')
.append('<p> Event3 = ' + eval(ev3).toString() + '</p>');
});
function fun_1() {
var txt = 'text del missatge';
alert(txt);
}
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<body>
</body>
I was recently working with events and wanted to view/control all events in a page. Having looked at possible solutions, I've decided to go my own way and create a custom system to monitor events. So, I did three things.
First, I needed a container for all the event listeners in the page: that's theEventListeners object. It has three useful methods: add(), remove(), and get().
Next, I created an EventListener object to hold the necessary information for the event, i.e.: target, type, callback, options, useCapture, wantsUntrusted, and added a method remove() to remove the listener.
Lastly, I extended the native addEventListener() and removeEventListener() methods to make them work with the objects I've created (EventListener and EventListeners).
Usage:
var bodyClickEvent = document.body.addEventListener("click", function () {
console.log("body click");
});
// bodyClickEvent.remove();
addEventListener() creates an EventListener object, adds it to EventListeners and returns the EventListener object, so it can be removed later.
EventListeners.get() can be used to view the listeners in the page. It accepts an EventTarget or a string (event type).
// EventListeners.get(document.body);
// EventListeners.get("click");
Demo
Let's say we want to know every event listener in this current page. We can do that (assuming you're using a script manager extension, Tampermonkey in this case). Following script does this:
// ==UserScript==
// #name New Userscript
// #namespace http://tampermonkey.net/
// #version 0.1
// #description try to take over the world!
// #author You
// #include https://stackoverflow.com/*
// #grant none
// ==/UserScript==
(function() {
fetch("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/akinuri/js-lib/master/EventListener.js")
.then(function (response) {
return response.text();
})
.then(function (text) {
eval(text);
window.EventListeners = EventListeners;
});
})(window);
And when we list all the listeners, it says there are 299 event listeners. There "seems" to be some duplicates, but I don't know if they're really duplicates. Not every event type is duplicated, so all those "duplicates" might be an individual listener.
Code can be found at my repository. I didn't want to post it here because it's rather long.
Update: This doesn't seem to work with jQuery. When I examine the EventListener, I see that the callback is
function(b){return"undefined"!=typeof r&&r.event.triggered!==b.type?r.event.dispatch.apply(a,arguments):void 0}
I believe this belongs to jQuery, and is not the actual callback. jQuery stores the actual callback in the properties of the EventTarget:
$(document.body).click(function () {
console.log("jquery click");
});
To remove an event listener, the actual callback needs to be passed to the removeEventListener() method. So in order to make this work with jQuery, it needs further modification. I might fix that in the future.
There exists nice jQuery Events extension :
(topic source)
changing these functions will allow you to log the listeners added:
EventTarget.prototype.addEventListener
EventTarget.prototype.attachEvent
EventTarget.prototype.removeEventListener
EventTarget.prototype.detachEvent
read the rest of the listeners with
console.log(someElement.onclick);
console.log(someElement.getAttribute("onclick"));
I have Javascript that people are including in their page. In my Javascript I have a version of jQuery (1.8 for sake of easy reference) that is sectioned off into its own namespace, and referenced via a global variable (but not one of the two default vars of "$" or "jQuery"). This allows users to have jQuery in their page and have it not interfere with the stuff I'm doing internally in my functions.
So we have one page that has jQuery already (1.4), and everything works fine, except that the user and my code are both listening to "click" events on elements, and theirs is going first, so on the few events they do that return false, jQuery stops propagation and my event never gets triggered. I need my event to go first. The user is expecting my onClick functionality to still work.
Now I know that jQuery keeps its own order of events internally through the _data() object, and through this it is possible to unbind existing events, bind my event, then rebind the existing events, but that only applies to objects bound through that instance of jQuery. I'd rather not just blindly look for the jQuery object in hopes that the conflict was introduced by a user's own version of jQuery. After all what happens when a user binds the event not through jQuery? Trying to manipulate the existing jQuery object in the page isn't a good solution.
I know that, depending on browser, they are using addEventListener/removeEventListener or attachEvent/detachEvent. If only I could get a listing of the already added events, I could rebind them in the order I wanted, but I can't find out how. Looking through the DOM via Chrome inspect I don't see onclick bound anywhere (not on the object, not on window or document either).
I'm having the darndest time trying to figure out just exactly where jQuery binds its listening. To be able to control the order of its own events, jQuery must blanketly listen somewhere and then fire off its own functions right? If I could figure out where that's done I might get some insight into how to ensure my event is always first. Or maybe there's some Javascript API I haven't been able to find on Google.
Any suggestions?
We solved this by just adding a little jQuery extension that inserts events at the head of the event chain:
$.fn.bindFirst = function(name, fn) {
var elem, handlers, i, _len;
this.bind(name, fn);
for (i = 0, _len = this.length; i < _len; i++) {
elem = this[i];
handlers = jQuery._data(elem).events[name.split('.')[0]];
handlers.unshift(handlers.pop());
}
};
Then, to bind your event:
$(".foo").bindFirst("click", function() { /* Your handler */ });
Easy peasy!
As Bergi and Chris Heald said in the comments, it turns out there's no way to get at the existing events from the DOM, and no method to insert events "first". They are fired in the order they were inserted by design, and hidden by design. As a few posters mentioned you have access to the ones added through the same instance of jQuery that you're using via jQuery's data, but that's it.
There is one other case where you can run before an event that was bound before your code ran, and that's if they used the "onclick" HTML attribute. In that case you can write a wrapper function, as nothingisnecessary pointed out in a rather over-the-top toned comment below. While this wouldn't help in the instance of the original question I asked, and it's now very rare for events to be bound this way (most people and frameworks use addEvent or attachEventListener underneath now), it is one scenario in which you can solve the issue of "running first", and since a lot of people visit this question looking for answers now, I thought I'd make sure the answer is complete.
I encounter an opposite situation where I was asked to include a library, which uses event.stopImmediatePropagation() on an element, to our website. So some of my event handlers are skipped. Here is what I do (as answered here):
<span onclick="yourEventHandler(event)">Button</span>
Warning: this is not the recommended way to bind events, other developers may murder you for this.
Its not a proper solution, but ... You can add event handler to parent node in capture phase. Not on target element itself!
<div>
<div id="target"></div>
</div>
target.parentNode.addEventListener('click',()=>{console.log('parent capture phase handler')},true)
Third argument in addEventListener means:
true - capture phase
false - bubble phase
Helpful links:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/EventTarget/addEventListener
https://javascript.info/bubbling-and-capturing
Found it easiest to add addListener and removeListener methods to document (as that's only where I need them - I suppose you can use Element.prototype and this instead). Only one "real" listener is added per type, and it's just a func to call the actual listeners in order. The eventListeners dictionary is added to document (so can mess with the handler or order).
[edit]
I think the correct answer for most cases is to use the 3rd argument of addEventListener: https://stackoverflow.com/a/29923421. The answer below ignores the argument (on purpose).
[edit] Updated code to only add one extra property: document.eventHandlers + modified naming.
// Storage.
document.eventListeners = {}; // { type: [ handlerFunc, listenerFuncs ] }
// Add event listener - returns index.
document.addListener = (type, listener, atIndex) => {
// Get info.
const listening = document.eventListeners[type];
// Add to existing.
if (listening) {
// Clean up.
atIndex = atIndex || 0;
const listeners = listening[1]; // Array of funcs.
// Already has.
const iExists = listeners.indexOf(listener);
if (iExists !== -1) {
// Nothing to do.
if (iExists === atIndex)
return atIndex;
// Remove from old position.
listeners.splice(atIndex, 1);
}
// Add (supporting one cycle of negatives).
const nListeners = listeners.length;
if (atIndex > nListeners)
atIndex = nListeners;
else if (atIndex < 0)
atIndex = Math.max(0, atIndex + nListeners + 1);
listeners.splice(atIndex, 0, listener);
}
// New one.
else {
// Handler func.
const handler = (...args) => {
const listening = document.eventListeners[type];
if (listening) {
const listeners = listening[1]; // Array of funcs.
for (const listener of listeners)
listener(...args);
}
};
// Update dictionary.
document.eventListeners[type] = [ handler, [ listener ] ];
// Add listener.
document.addEventListener(type, handler);
// First one.
atIndex = 0;
}
// Return index.
return atIndex;
};
// Remove event listener - returns index (-1 if not found).
document.removeListener = (type, listener) => {
// Get info.
const listening = document.eventListeners[type];
if (!listening)
return -1;
// Check if exists.
const listeners = listening[1];
const iExists = listeners.indexOf(listener);
if (iExists !== -1) {
// Remove listener.
listeners.splice(iExists, 1);
// If last one.
if (!listeners.length) {
// Remove listener.
const handlerFunc = listening[0];
document.removeEventListener(type, handlerFunc);
// Update dictionary.
delete document.eventListeners[type];
}
}
// Return index.
return iExists;
}
Aliaksei Pavlenkos suggestion about useCapture can be used. His allegation that it must be attached to the parent node is wrong: MDN
Event listeners in the “capturing” phase are called before event listeners in any non-capturing phases
target.addEventListener(type, listener, useCapture);
Just so it's said, I think this might be possible if you override the native implementations of these functions. This is BAD practice - very bad practice when developing a library to alter native implementations, because it can easily conflict with other libraries.
However, for completeness, here's one possibility (completely untested, just demonstrating the general concept):
// override createElement()
var temp = document.createElement;
document.createElement = function() {
// create element
var el = document.createElement.original.apply(document, arguments);
// override addEventListener()
el.addEventListenerOriginal = el.addEventListener;
el._my_stored_events = [];
// add custom functions
el.addEventListener = addEventListenerCustom;
el.addEventListenerFirst = addEventListenerFirst;
// ...
};
document.createElement.original = temp;
// define main event listeners
function myMainEventListeners(type) {
if (myMainEventListeners.all[type] === undefined) {
myMainEventListeners.all[type] = function() {
for (var i = 0; i < this._my_stored_events.length; i++) {
var event = this._my_stored_events[i];
if (event.type == type) {
event.listener.apply(this, arguments);
}
}
}
}
return myMainEventListeners.all[type];
}
myMainEventListeners.all = {};
// define functions to mess with the event list
function addEventListenerCustom(type, listener, useCapture, wantsUntrusted) {
// register handler in personal storage list
this._my_stored_events.push({
'type' : type,
'listener' : listener
});
// register custom event handler
if (this.type === undefined) {
this.type = myMainEventListeners(type);
}
}
function addEventListenerFirst(type, listener) {
// register handler in personal storage list
this._my_stored_events.push({
'type' : type,
'listener' : listener
});
// register custom event handler
if (this.type === undefined) {
this.type = myMainEventListeners(type);
}
}
// ...
A lot more work would need to be done in this regard to truly lock this down, and again, it's best not to modify native libraries. But it's a useful mental exercise that helps to demonstrate the flexibility JavaScript provides in solving problems like this.
I want to add an listener exactly once for beforeunload. This is my pseudocode:
if(window.hasEventListener('beforeunload') === false) {
window.addEventListener('beforeunload', function() { ... }, false);
}
But hasEventListener does not exist obviously. How can I achieve this? Thanks.
In fact there is no need to check if an listener was added to a target:
If multiple identical EventListeners are registered on the same EventTarget with the same parameters, the duplicate instances are discarded. They do not cause the EventListener to be called twice, and since the duplicates are discarded, they do not need to be removed manually with the removeEventListener method.
Source:https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/EventTarget.addEventListener#Multiple_identical_event_listeners
Using jquery you can do use data("events") on any object (here the window) :
var hasbeforeunload = $(window).data("events") && $(window).data("events").['beforeunload'];
But this works only for jquery added events.
In a more general case, you should simply store the information that you add a listener somewhere :
var addedListeners = {};
function addWindowListenerIfNone(eventType, fun) {
if (addedListeners[eventType]) return;
addedListeners[eventType] = fun;
window.addEventListener(eventType, fun);
}
I think there is no standard way in javascript to get the existing event handlers. At best you could surcharge the addEventListener function of Node to intercept and store the listeners but I don't recommend it...
EDIT :
From jQuery 1.8, event data are available in $._data(element, "events"). The change log has a warning that should be taken into account :
Note that this is not a supported public interface; the actual data
structures may change incompatibly from version to version.
In Chrome Dev tool, you can check all events attached to an element (For debugging)-
// print all events attached to document
var eventObjectAttachedToDocument = getEventListeners(document);
for (var event in eventObjectAttachedToDocument) {
console.log(event);
}
As the question states, what I'm attempting to do is have a function that is called when a DOM element is removed from the DOM, much like a destructor.
I looked into unload, but from my understanding that's only called when the browser navigates away from the page.
Thanks in advance!
It is possible to use the special events to build removal tracking. I've created an example that allows to bind to an removed event. Note that this approach only works when the removal is initiated by jQuery (calling $(…).remove()) for example. For a more general solution use DOMNodeRemoved but that wouldn't work in IE.
To enable tracking for an element call $(…).trackRemoval() and the element will fire a removed event when you remove it or one of its parents.
// Create a scope so that our variables are not global
(function(){
/**
* True while unbinding removal tracking
*/
var isUntracking = false;
/**
* A reference that is only known here that nobody else can play with our special event.
*/
var dummy = function(){};
/**
* Special event to track removals. This could have any name but is invoked during jQuery's cleanup on removal to detach event handlers.
*/
jQuery.event.special.elementRemoved = {
remove: function(o){
if(o.handler===dummy && !isUntracking){
$(this).trigger('removed');
}
}
};
/**
* Starts removal tracking on an element
*/
jQuery.fn.trackRemoval = function(){
this.bind('elementRemoved', dummy);
};
/**
* Stops removal tracking on an element
*/
jQuery.fn.untrackRemoval = function(){
isUntracking = true;
this.unbind('elementRemoved', dummy);
isUntracking = false;
};
})();
The jsFiddle contains sample code for usage.
I don't know if it's that what you're looking for. Not really pretty code, just to show what I would like to use:
// Just for this script's sake, you'll want to do it differently
var body = $("body");
var element = $('#loadingBlock');
// Bind the "destructor" firing event
body.bind("elementDeleted", function (element) {
// your "destructor" code
});
// Trigger the event, delete element, can be placed in a function, overloaded, etc.
body.trigger("elementDeleted", element);
element.remove();
There are of course solutions based on watching the DOM directly but the problem is the browser compatibility. You should probably check out mutation events.
Try this:
(function($) {
var _remove = $.fn.remove;
$.fn.remove = function() {
this.trigger('remove'); // notify removal
return _remove.apply(this, arguments); // call original
};
})(jQuery);
usage:
$(element).bind('remove', callback);
...
// some time later
$(element).remove();
See a working example at http://jsfiddle.net/alnitak/25Pnn/
You could always Overload the Remove function (all javascript objects can be dynamically changes in runtime) and replace it with your own function that triggers an event you can use to react to remove.