How do I prevent a parent's onclick event from firing when a child anchor is clicked?

Question

I'm currently using jQuery to make a div clickable and in this div I also have anchors. The problem I'm running into is that when I click on an anchor both click events are firing (for the div and the anchor). How do I prevent the div's onclick event from firing when an anchor is clicked?

Here's the broken code:

JavaScript

var url = $("#clickable a").attr("href");

$("#clickable").click(function() {
    window.location = url;
    return true;
})

HTML

<div id="clickable">
    <!-- Other content. -->
    <a href="http://foo.example">I don't want #clickable to handle this click event.</a>
</div>

Answer 1

Events bubble to the highest point in the DOM at which a click event has been attached. So in your example, even if you didn't have any other explicitly clickable elements in the div, every child element of the div would bubble their click event up the DOM to until the DIV's click event handler catches it.

There are two solutions to this is to check to see who actually originated the event. jQuery passes an eventargs object along with the event:

$("#clickable").click(function(e) {
    var senderElement = e.target;
    // Check if sender is the <div> element e.g.
    // if($(e.target).is("div")) {
    window.location = url;
    return true;
});

You can also attach a click event handler to your links which tell them to stop event bubbling after their own handler executes:

$("#clickable a").click(function(e) {
   // Do something
   e.stopPropagation();
});

Answer 2

Use stopPropagation method, see an example:

$("#clickable a").click(function(e) {
   e.stopPropagation();
});

As said by jQuery Docs:

stopPropagation method prevents the event from bubbling up the DOM tree, preventing any parent handlers from being notified of the event.

Keep in mind that it does not prevent others listeners to handle this event(ex. more than one click handler for a button), if it is not the desired effect, you must use stopImmediatePropagation instead.

Answer 3

Here my solution for everyone out there looking for a non-jQuery code (pure javascript)

document.getElementById("clickable").addEventListener("click", function(e) {
    e = window.event || e; 
    if(this === e.target) {
      // put your code here
    }
});

Your code wont be executed if clicked on parent's children

Answer 4

If you do not intend to interact with the inner element/s in any case, then a CSS solution might be useful for you.

Just set the inner element/s to pointer-events: none

in your case:

.clickable > a {
    pointer-events: none;
}

or to target all inner elements generally:

.clickable * {
    pointer-events: none;
}

This easy hack saved me a lot of time while developing with ReactJS

Browser support could be found here: http://caniuse.com/#feat=pointer-events

Answer 5

Inline Alternative:

<div>
  <!-- Other content. -->
  <a onclick='event.stopPropagation();' href="http://foo.example">I don't want #clickable to handle this click event.</a>
</div>

Answer 6

You can also try this

$("#clickable").click(function(event) {
    var senderElementName = event.target.tagName.toLowerCase();
    if(senderElementName === 'div') {
        // Do something here 
    } else {
        // Do something with <a> tag
    }
});

Answer 7

Writing if anyone needs (worked for me):

event.stopImmediatePropagation()

From this solution.

Answer 8

I compare to ev.currentTarget when this is not available (React, etc).

$("#clickable").click(function(e) {
    if (e.target === e.currentTarget) {
        window.location = url;
        return true;
    }
})

Answer 9

Using return false; or e.stopPropogation(); will not allow further code to execute. It will stop flow at this point itself.

Answer 10

If you have multiple elements in the clickable div, you should do this:

$('#clickable *').click(function(e){ e.stopPropagation(); });

Answer 11

e.stopPropagation() is a correct solution, but in case you don't want to attach any event handler to your inner anchor, you can simply attach this handler to your outer div:

e => { e.target === e.currentTarget && window.location = URL; }

Answer 12

Here's an example using Angular 2+

For example, if you wanted to close a Modal Component if the user clicks outside of it:

// Close the modal if the document is clicked.

@HostListener('document:click', ['$event'])
public onDocumentClick(event: MouseEvent): void {
  this.closeModal();
}

// Don't close the modal if the modal itself is clicked.

@HostListener('click', ['$event'])
public onClick(event: MouseEvent): void {
  event.stopPropagation();
}

Answer 13

var inner = document.querySelector("#inner");
var outer = document.querySelector("#outer");
inner.addEventListener('click',innerFunction);
outer.addEventListener('click',outerFunction);

function innerFunction(event){
  event.stopPropagation();
  console.log("Inner Functiuon");
}

function outerFunction(event){
  console.log("Outer Functiuon");
}

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width">
  <title>Pramod Kharade-Event with Outer and Inner Progration</title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="outer" style="width:100px;height:100px;background-color:green;">
  <div id="inner" style="width:35px;height:35px;background-color:yellow;"></div>
</div>
</body>
</html>

Answer 14

If it is in inline context, in HTML try this:

onclick="functionCall();event.stopPropagation();

Answer 15

You need to stop the event from reaching (bubbling to) the parent (the div). See the part about bubbling here, and jQuery-specific API info here.

Answer 16

for those that are not using jQuery

document.querySelector('.clickable').addEventListener('click', (e) =>{
    if(!e.target.classList.contains('clickable')) return
    // place code here
})

Answer 17

Here is a react based solution example. In my case I had a modal contact form that had a transparent outer wrapper. I wanted any click outside of the modal to close the modal.

import React, { useState } from 'react';

function Component() {
  const [contactOpen, setContactOpen] = useState(false);
  const handleContactToggle = () => {
    if (e.target === e.currentTarget) {
      //e.target ===  item the onClick is attached to. 
      //e.currentTarget ===  item that received the click
      // If these do not match the click is somewhere inside the InnerComponent
      setContactOpen(!contactOpen);
    }
  };
  const ContactModalClass = (contactOpen) ? styles.contactModalOpen : styles.contactModalClosed

  function handleModalToggle(e) {
    if (e.target === e.currentTarget) {
      handleContactToggle();
    }
  }
  <div className={ContactModalClass} onClick={e => handleContactToggle(e)} id='OuterWrapper-Click-To-Close'>
    <InnerComponent id='Inner-Form-Click-Does-Not-Trigger-Outer-Function' />
  </div>
}

Note: Question appeared for my react search hence the react answer.

Answer 18

To specify some sub element as unclickable write the css hierarchy as in the example below.

In this example I stop propagation to any elements (*) inside td inside tr inside a table with the class ".subtable"

$(document).ready(function()
{    
   $(".subtable tr td *").click(function (event)
   {
       event.stopPropagation();
   });

});

Answer 19

You can check whether the target is not your div-element and then issue another click event on the parent after which you will "return" from the handle.

$('clickable').click(function (event) {
    let div = $(event.target);
    if (! div.is('div')) {
       div.parent().click();
       return;
    }
    // Then Implement your logic here
}

Answer 20

Here is a non jQuery solution that worked for me.

<div style="background:cyan; width:100px; height:100px;" onclick="if (event.srcElement==this) {console.log('outer');}">
    <a style="background:red" onclick="console.log('inner');">Click me</a>
</div>

Answer 21

In case anybody is finding this post and using an anchor tag as their parent element, you should try:

event.preventDefault()

in your child onclick event. Found this solution here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1607890/17225652

Answer 22

In case someone had this issue using React, this is how I solved it.

scss:

#loginBackdrop {
position: absolute;
width: 100% !important;
height: 100% !important;
top:0px;
left:0px;
z-index: 9; }

#loginFrame {
width: $iFrameWidth;
height: $iFrameHeight;
background-color: $mainColor;
position: fixed;
z-index: 10;
top: 50%;
left: 50%;
margin-top: calc(-1 * #{$iFrameHeight} / 2);
margin-left: calc(-1 * #{$iFrameWidth} / 2);
border: solid 1px grey;
border-radius: 20px;
box-shadow: 0px 0px 90px #545454; }

Component's render():

render() {
    ...
    return (
        <div id='loginBackdrop' onClick={this.props.closeLogin}>
            <div id='loginFrame' onClick={(e)=>{e.preventDefault();e.stopPropagation()}}>
             ... [modal content] ...
            </div>
        </div>
    )
}

By a adding an onClick function for the child modal (content div) mouse click events are prevented to reach the 'closeLogin' function of the parent element.

This did the trick for me and I was able to create a modal effect with 2 simple divs.

Answer 23

If a child element is clicked, then the event bubbles up to the parent and event.target !== event.currentTarget.

So in your function, you can check this and return early, i.e.:

var url = $("#clickable a").attr("href");
$("#clickable").click(function(event) {
    if ( event.target !== event.currentTarget ){
        // user clicked on a child and we ignore that
        return;
    }
    window.location = url;
    return true;
})

Answer 24

This is what you are looking for

mousedown event. this works on every DOM elements to prevent javascript focus handler like this:

$('.no-focus').mousedown(function (e) {
   e.prevenDefault()

   // do stuff
}

in vue.js framework, you can use modifier like this:

<span @mousedown.prevent> no focus </span>

Note that using on the input will prevent text selection handler

Answer 25

add a as follows:

<a href="http://foo.example" onclick="return false;">....</a>

or return false; from click handler for #clickable like:

  $("#clickable").click(function() {
        var url = $("#clickable a").attr("href");
        window.location = url;
        return false;
   });

Answer 26

All solution are complicated and of jscript. Here is the simplest version:

var IsChildWindow=false;

function ParentClick()
{
    if(IsChildWindow==true)
    {
        IsChildWindow==false;
        return;
    }
    //do ur work here   
}


function ChildClick()
{
    IsChildWindow=true;
    //Do ur work here    
}

Answer 27

<a onclick="return false;" href="http://foo.example">I want to ignore my parent's onclick event.</a>