Detect background click in jQuery

Question

Say I have the following HTML:

<div>
  <span>span text</span> div text <span>some more text</span>
</div>

I want to make it so that when I click on span, it will trigger some event (e.g. to make the text bold), that's easy:

$('span').click( ... )

But now I when I click away from the element, I want another event to trigger (e.g. to make the text normal weight). I need to detect, somehow, a click not inside the span element. This is very similar to the blur() event, but for non INPUT elements. I don't mind if this click is only detected inside the DIV element and not the entire BODY of the page, btw.

I tried to get an event to trigger in non-SPAN elements with the following:

$('div').click( ... ) // triggers in the span element
$('div').not('span').click( ... ) // still triggers in the span element
$('div').add('span').click( ... ) // triggers first from span, then div

Another solution would be to read the event's target inside the click event. Here's an example of implementing it this way:

$('div').click(function(e) {
  if (e.target.nodeName != "span")
     ...
});

I was wondering if there was a more elegant solution like blur() though.

Answer 1

$(':not(span)').click(function(){
    //dostuff
})

Answer 2

I came up with a solution to this problem before jQuery was released...

Determine if any Other Outside Element was Clicked with Javascript

document.onclick = function() {
  if(clickedOutsideElement('divTest'))
    alert('Outside the element!');
  else
    alert('Inside the element!');
}

function clickedOutsideElement(elemId) {
  var theElem = getEventTarget(window.event);

  while(theElem != null) {
    if(theElem.id == elemId)
      return false;

    theElem = theElem.offsetParent;
  }

  return true;
}

function getEventTarget(evt) {
  var targ = (evt.target) ? evt.target : evt.srcElement;

  if(targ != null) {
    if(targ.nodeType == 3)
      targ = targ.parentNode;
  }

  return targ;
}

Answer 3

If you return false from your click handler for the span you'll prevent the event from bubbling, which will keep the div click handler from running.

Answer 4

Your last method should work best even if it's messy. Here's a little refinement:

$('span').click(function() {
    var span = $(this);
    // Mark the span active somehow (you could use .data() instead)
    span.addClass('span-active');

    $('div').click(function(e) {
        // If the click was not inside the active span
        if(!$(e.target).hasClass('span-active')) {
            span.removeClass('span-active');
            // Remove the bind as it will be bound again on the next span click
            $('div').unbind('click');
        }
    });
});

It's not clean, but it should work. No unnecessary binds and this should be foolproof (no false positives etc).

Answer 5

Using the tabIndex property, you can actually make arbitrary elements focusable:

var node = document.createElement("span");
node.tabIndex = -1;

node.addEventListener("focus", function () {
    // clicked the element...
}, true);

node.addEventListener("blur", function () {
    // clicked away from the element...
}, true);

Unfortunately, this example probably won't work in IE. I haven't tested it myself, so it might!

Also, a tabIndex of -1 means the element can be clicked on, but can't be focused with the keyboard. You can change it to 0 if you want it to be focusable with Tab or Shift+Tab.